Council agrees to uphold BOZAR decision in tie vote

Long discussion over two-and-a-half feet

[ By Mark Reaman ]

In a somewhat confusing conclusion, the Crested Butte town council on Monday split their vote, twice, 3-3, over an appeal by a property owner to overturn a BOZAR (Board of Zoning and Architectural Review) decision that prevented him from removing and replacing an accessory building on the corner of Third and Teocalli. The tie vote basically resulted in the decision of BOZAR to deny the conditional use permit request to be upheld.

Mike Haney was hoping to get a conditional use permit and remove his current accessory building, donate it to the town for affordable housing, and replace it with a shorter but wider building that would result in the building being located just five feet from the property line to his neighbor to the east. The current building is seven-and-a-half feet from the property line. Photos indicated the building was already very close to the neighbor’s house and impacted his front porch views. Along with the visual impact, concern was raised over the snow shedding from the building onto the neighbor’s property. Haney said he had an engineer design a snow retention system that would prevent that from happening.

The Crested Butte Municipal Code requires appeals of a BOZAR decision review by the council to have a fresh look at the evidence. As such, community development director Troy Russ explained that the town planning department was required to repeat their recommendation that the application be approved, consistent with their original position at the BOZAR hearing. Town planners said Monday that the Haney request met the town code’s conditional use criteria and was compliant with requirements of the R-1 zone district.
Town staff and attorneys directed the council to not look at the appeal as making a decision on whether to overturn or uphold the BOZAR decision but rather to consider the December 20 appeal as a totally new hearing and to make a decision based on evidence presented that evening. In a process that took more than two-and-a-half hours, the council at first voted 3-3 on a motion to deny the property owner’s request to allow the replacement building to be just five feet away from the property line based on substantial adverse impacts to the neighbor. Staff said that meant the BOZAR decision would stand. Another vote to explicitly overturn the BOZAR decision also tied 3-3 so Haney thanked the council for their time and left without getting his request.

Mayor Ian Billick was not at the meeting and councilmembers Mallika Magner, Mona Merrill and Jason MacMillan voted against the Haney request while councilmembers Anna Fenerty, Beth Goldstone and Chris Haver voted to support the conditional use permit.