The Town of Manitowish Waters is continuing to propose revisions to the town's Uniform Dwelling Code (UDC) and I am continuing to speak my mind about it. Last October the town board held a hearing to propose extending UDC inspection requirements to accessory buildings and garages over 200 square feet in size. I testified about what I thought of the proposal at the public hearing, as did several others. As a result of the hearing, the town board dropped the proposal, at least for now.
This past Tuesday the town board held another hearing on a different proposed revison to the UDC ordinance, which is Chapter 158 Article 1 of the town's Code Of Ordinances. Most of the proposal I had no problem with as it related to fines and forfeitures levied for violations and the Board of Appeal's role in the process. However, a separate part of the proposal was a giant step backwards.
I first became aware of the revision by reading the legal notice in the Lakeland Times. Right away I saw a problem, and at the public hearing, I was surprised that I was the only one to offer testimony about the language printed in the legal notice The "problem" was that the proposed revision replaced very specific language in the existing ordinance with language that was anything but specific and open to all sorts of different interpretations. The existing language is:
The scope of this article includes the following:
(1) Construction and inspection of all new one- and two-family dwellings built after the date of adoption of this article.
(2) Construction and inspection of habitable additions to all dwellings. For purposes of this article, habitable additions are those that add year-round conditioned space either horizontally or vertically to an existing dwelling.
The new language splits dwellings into two groups -- those built before, and those built after June 1, 1980. I understand why this was done -- it works better with the state's UDC language. However, the town's new proposed language muddied the waters by extending UDC inspection requirements to all alterations and additions. The proposed language did not define "alterations" or "additions" and I felt that this was a mistake, and I said so, offering examples of how the intent, whatever it actually was, could be whatever the reader of the ordinance wanted it to be. For instance, removing a portion of a non-structural wall in a 50 year old cottage could be considered an alteration requiring an inspection by the UDC inspector, which I would consider an unwarranted and ridiculous expansion of governmental intrusion. I suggested restriciting alterations and additions by using language similar to (2) above.
It appeared that the supervisors accepted my comments as reasonable and hopefully the proposed language will be revised with my suggestion in mind.