Grading, mobile homes

Ordinance 847, written to regulate mobile home parks within Saratoga, came back before the Saratoga Planning Commission during their regularly scheduled meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 11 at the Saratoga Town Hall. The ordinance, which rewrites several sections of Title 18, came back to the planning commission following the Saratoga Town Council meeting on Sept. 4 (Front page, Sept. 12, 2018 Saratoga Sun, “Dirt, doctor discussed”).

The commission also discussed making changes to 15.04.100 of the municipal code, which regulates the requirements for a grading permit within town limits, as well as approved three variances after public hearings.

Grading the Permit

Under new business, planning commission chairman Jon Nelson brought up what he saw as a need to update the town code pertaining to grading permits. According to Nelson, the code leaves much open to interpretation and is not as detailed as section 12.08, which regulates excavating within town limits.

“Our existing application procedure for a grading and excavation permit is fairly loose and so there was some discussion about trying to shore that up a little bit with some additional language or incorporating language from ... “excavations” and adding that to ... “grading,” said Nelson.

Nelson added that one of his biggest concerns with 15.04.100 is that it does not require for any sort of restoration like 12.08 does.

“If we cross reference that against the excavation code, there’s a lot of conversation in there or stipulations about barriers and warning devices,” Nelson said.

Will Faust, town council representative on the planning commission, voiced his support for the idea as long as “we’re not making it too onerous for someone to clear a spot for building a building or something like that.” Faust added that another concern with both grading and excavating within town limits is that the town code does not explicitly state that mining is not allowed and, because of this, the Department of Environmental Quality is able to issue mining licenses in residential areas.

“I think one of the biggest issues, from a legal perspective, is we do not prohibitively say that mining is not allowed anywhere in our zoning area or within residential districts. That is something we do need to clean up, per DEQ request,” Faust said. “DEQ has told us that there’s really nothing in our code that prevents them from issuing a mining permit in my neighborhood and that’s really interesting to me because it’s not a residential use—yet it’s something that DEQ says they’ve got no problem permitting a mine in any one of your backyards.”

After further discussion between Nelson, Faust, Tom Westring and Jim Beckmann, who joined via phone call, it was decided that the planning commission would begin to approach the issue of excavating and grading in the upcoming meetings.

Revisiting Mobile Homes

In old business, the discussion of mobile homes once again returned to the planning commission. While ordinance 847 had passed on the first two readings at Saratoga Town Council, it was during the third and final reading Faust noticed some changes that needed to be made to the document.

“As I was reading this in third and final reading, several things popped up. One is, we have several different versions of this floating around and I think some of the typos … didn’t get caught,” said Faust.

In addition to the errors needing fixed, other concerns expressed during the town council meeting brought by Faust to the planning commission centered around the transfer of mobile home park licenses and the legality of short-term occupancy of a recreational vehicle (RV) at private residences.

“Under section ‘B,’ a good comment was brought up on the ability of this to transfer ownership. I’m in favor of that. If you think of a liquor license, you sell your bar you sell your liquor license as well. As long as it stays with the property that is permitted,” Faust said.

Nelson suggested a possible change to the language be “permits shall not be transferable to a different location or property than originally issued,” which was supported by the other members of the planning commission. A large part of the discussion, however, focused on the temporary occupancy of RVs within town limits.

“Something that was brought up by JennieLou (Garland) after the meeting, to me anyway, was a provision for occupancy of a travel trailer. One of the things that was brought up was a provision to allow a very short term occupancy. For example: you’ve got relatives, they’re on their way to Yellowstone, their just going through Saratoga and you want to let them park in the driveway for two nights,” Nelson said.

While the occupancy of an RV in the town right-of-way would still be against the town code (9.12.020), the planning commission agreed there should be a provision to allow for residents to accommodate the use of RVs on their private property for shot durations. Faust added, however, the commission should look into possible exceptions for RD 6000, which often has smaller lots than the other residential areas and does not allow for much space for RVs.

With the changes made to ordinance 847, it will head back to the Saratoga Town Council for its third and final reading before being approved. Should there be additional changes requested by the council, it will once again go back to the planning commission.

The next scheduled meeting of the Saratoga Planning Commission will be at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 9 at the Saratoga Town Hall.