A couple of points of interest coming out of last night's hearing before the Collinsville planning commission regarding a request for a change in zoning for one property on Gaylord St. from residential to planned business or commercial.
How not to make your case by the attorney for the beauty shop owners, Mr. Dowling:
"There will be no basis in fact in what you will hear from the residents tonight."
"Everyone's (the neighbors) going to learn to live with it."
How to make your case by the main spokesman for the residents, Guy Cochran:
Use a slide show with google maps showing all the properties in question and their relation to each other and the surrounding area. Isolate the property in question to show that it is really not a first tier property, but actually set back one lot from Vandalia. Use slides so well put together that the commission asks for one slide to stay up on the screen as a point of reference for the rest of the discussion.
How to run what could have been an emotionally charged meeting exceptionally well by the chairman of the planning commission:
Chairman Jerome made it clear at the beginning in a serious, no nonsense tolerated, tone that the board would only hear testimony about the facts in the zoning matter. No past issues, whether lawsuits or "he said, she said" would be allowed and he, in fact, would decide if testimony would be allowed. Excellently run.
As it happened the case was made through the slides. One slide in particular stood out, although the google maps of the neighborhood were excellent, the list of commercial properties used as comparison for support of this zoning change were all on Vandalia with access from Vandalia. The Gaylord property was not in that category at all. The list was a stunningly brilliant piece of work.
The attorney for those asking for a business zoning tended to fall back on vague, almost pouty rhetoric and an armload of documents which he asked to be put into the record. Many were not certified and had to be accepted conditionally. This stack of paper reminded me of the 300 page bills new i Phone owners are receiving and which I linked in a previous post.
This is a very unfortunate situation for all involved, buyer, seller and residents. It should have never happened, since anyone remotley familar with the location of the property should have quickly realized the property in question and the zoning didn't look right. Sloppy work on the part of the person granting the request at City hall.
The city needs to review its internal zoning approval process to make sure costly mistakes like this do not happen in the future.
Posted by: Ron | August 17, 2007 at 08:48 AM
Ron...It is a bit ironic that you mention the seller in your post as the previous owner was deceased and the inheriting kids disagreed on how the property should be sold. Obviously greed won that battle. Additionally the residents notified the realitor that the property was zoned residential prior to the sale as a result of the realitors newspaper ad noting it as a commercial site. The realitor pulled the ad but sold it as commercial anyway.
I fully agree that the city needs to review their process as they currently deem the "the map" as the determining factor but the courts give "the ordinace" priority.
Posted by: Miles | August 17, 2007 at 10:53 AM