By GENE KEMMETER
of The Gazette
The town of Dewey is the latest Portage County municipality to reconsider its involvement with the Smart Growth comprehensive planning program.
The towns of Alban, Linwood and Sharon and the villages of Rosholt and Almond have already withdrawn from the county's Smart Growth planning program, which received a grant from the state to help develop a countywide plan.
Dewey residents met independently on Thursday, Jan. 22, to listen to speakers discuss whether to continue with the program, and the Dewey Town Board held an informational meeting on comprehensive planning on Tuesday, Jan. 27. Both meetings had standing-room-only crowds, the first at the Starlite Ballroom in the town of Hull and the second at the County Annex in Stevens Point.
The Smart Growth program was created in the 2000-2001 budget and approved by Gov. Tommy Thompson with bipartisan support to have local municipalities develop a land-use planning guide throughout the state. All municipalities are required to adopt a land-use plan by January 2010.
Portage County received a grant of $504,000 to complete a countywide plan after all 28 municipalities in the county agreed to participate. Five of them have since withdrawn.
Charles Kell, director of the Portage County Planning and Zoning Department, and Daniel Mielke, a Rudolph area farmer and the town of Dewey assessor who is a candidate for the District 70 Assembly seat, spoke at both sessions, Kell supporting the program and Mielke questioning the necessity.
The format at both sessions allowed each speaker to make a presentation and then each could address any question.
Dewey residents who organized Thursday's session also sent out a citizens' survey, asking residents nine questions pertaining to their land, planning and zoning. The responses are due by Saturday, Jan. 31. One of the issues on that survey involved the town allowing two-acre lots. Presently, 10-acre lots are the norm, although there are two-acre lots on the west side of the town, particularly along the Wisconsin River and Lake DuBay.
Thursday's session also featured presentations by Greg Swank, a state Senate candidate and property rights advocate, and Clark Palmer, a pharmacist and opponent of the Smart Growth law.
Tuesday's session also featured Richard Stadelman, executive director of the Wisconsin Towns Association, who said the Smart Growth law had some bugs that need to be corrected but he urged the town to continue planning. "I think towns should develop a plan. That's the initiative I see here."
The law was properly passed as part of the state budget because it includes a $3 million grant program, Stadelman said. Other laws have been included in the budget bill that people have accepted, he said, so he doesn't see the law being repealed because it was in the budget.
Other states have developed plans from the top down, but Wisconsin's process is from the bottom up. "This continues local control," he said. "This is based on local communities having decisions."
All plans must include nine elements, he said, and how each community addresses each element is a local decision. "The state asks if each community has addressed the elements," he said.
Stadelman said the hammer in the law is designed because 360 towns do not have town zoning or county zoning which creates problems about what citizens can do with their land. The law requires all municipalities to address the nine elements so they lead to consistent land-use decisions as of Jan. 1, 2010.
The plans have to be consistent with existing laws, he said, such as shoreland zoning regulations within 300 feet of a river or lake.
He said the Towns Association is supporting legislation to tweak the Smart Growth law. The association has three goals, he said, one, to allow towns with low population to have a more streamlined plan than presently required; two, to require town approval of county plans before county adoption; and three, to give towns veto power over future changes in the plan.
"This is your opportunity to make this plan consistent with your issues. It's an opportunity to use the law," he said. "I would encourage you to work with it. This encourages cooperation, at least an exchange of ideas. The decision of what's in any community's plan is your decision.
"Land use decisions are local decisions," he said. "Regional planning has no control over the plans. We encourage towns to participate with the county. We want towns to propose the plan that counties adopt.
"Don't blame planning for regulatory issues," Stadelman said. "A plan is not a regulatory tool, it's visionary."
He also said every landowner can't do whatever they wish with property because that impacts on others, sometimes in unfavorable ways.
Kell said the county Planning and Zoning Department is assisting with the consistency and coordination of the town plans that will make up the county plan. "It's our desire that we not end up with a county plan that says one thing and villages and towns say another," he said.
Towns have been asked to come up with their own plans, and the county will only deal with countywide issues such as public transportation and parks. "Local committees are meeting and developing local plans for towns," he said. "We are working to get each town and village to have a local plan adopted at the local level. It will be brought to the county and adopted and placed in the county plan."
The two-acre lot size has come under criticism from some Dewey residents and those lots had been allowed prior to 1999, when the town updated its plan and changed the minimum lot size to 10 acres to retain the rural character of the town, he said. "There is nothing that stops Dewey from making the change back to two acres. That's your local people that are making the decisions, it's not Portage County."
The town can use development, and it's up to the Town Board and residents to address those issues, he said.
While the town may propose changing the minimum lot size to two acres, the county doesn't want to deal with that now, preferring to wait until the entire town plan is completed.
He also warned against residents taking village powers from the town, saying it takes away the local authority for the town to control a number of items, such as zoning and land uses.
He urged the town to remain with the county's Smart Growth plan. "The county plan is committed to local control," he said, asking, "Is it better for governments to work together and cooperate or have governments go their own way?"
Addressing a question about maps regarding soil and floodplain, Kell said those are federal documents based on surveys of property made by the federal government. "We have only one choice and that is to follow the maps," he said. If someone disagrees with the maps, they can hire a surveyor or soil scientist to contest them. Mielke said the maps aren't accurate, but the property owner has to pay the money to prove they're incorrect.
Mielke said the town of Dewey needs the two-acre lots for future development. "We don't need any more open space in Dewey." Residential land and improvements account for 65 percent of the town's value, he said, yet they represent only 2.6 percent of the land in the town. More than 10,000 acres, or about 30 percent, of the town is considered wetlands.
He said any changes to the plan would be decided to the county's benefit, not Dewey's, and the town will lose a degree of control. He said some Dewey residents are restricted because their neighbors can build on two-acre lots while they can build on only 10 acres.
He said towns should remove themselves from the county planning process and draft a land-use plan according to the landowners' wishes.
On Tuesday, Mielke said Kell's comments about the two-acre zoning and the local control were different that what he's heard previously. "The question is, will he stick to his word?"
Mielke also said the law may be legal, even though it was included in the budget bill so it wasn't subjected to the public hearings that most legislation must go through. "But I think it's immoral. It was snuck in. There was no discussion of what's going on."
Swank, Rudolph, said the Smart Growth law came through the budget process because its supporters were told it would never get out of legislative committees. He linked the law to the 1,000 Friends group, which he said is trying to control land use throughout the nation. "It's bad law," he said. "It's taking away land."
Palmer, a Clark County resident, said the town of Dewey should withdraw from the county process and do the planning on its own. "The law doesn't say you need to have a comprehensive plan by January 2010," he said. "There is no enforcement provision in this legislation. If this is mandatory, why isn't there a penalty clause?
"This law is designed for you to give up your property rights," he said. "This law is advisory, this law is voluntary."
While several Dewey residents complained about the planning process, John Jazdzewski, a member of the town of Carson Planning Committee, said he's tired of people bashing the planning program.
"What the county is asking for," he said, "is in two years the rural plans will be implemented, and we'll have to change zoning. We go to the county for guidance and make the decisions on the local level. There's still tweaking going to be done. The county has no control over us. We're working together."
He said people aren't coming to meetings when input is requested. The biggest response came from high school students. "It's a plan. When you build a house you need a plan. When you want to get married you need a plan."