Village President’s Variance Request Continued

By Andrea Arens

Village President Dr. Peter March’s request for a variance at March Family Dental will be continued to the next Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on February 16.

Planning and Zoning Commission Members Allan Gillis, Erin Ekhart, Adam Jones, William Mercer, and Chairman Jim Petreikis were present. Commission member Connie March-Curtis was not present. Village Administrator Aimme Ingalls participated by phone. Village Attorney Jim Bartley also was present on behalf of the village.

March’s request for a variance on December 3, 2021, was for 12 feet in the rear yard abutting an apartment complex setback and a one-foot variance on the side yard setback.

According to a timeline written by March and read at the January 19 meeting, March showed the existing plat of survey for 517 S. Governors Highway to Village Administrator Aimee Ingalls in March of 2021, before the April 6 general election in which March was interim village president and was running unopposed for the same seat.

March wrote, “requested she (Ingalls) advise me if a 20-foot addition would be allowable. After reviewing the plans for a few days, she assured me a 20-foot addition would be possible, as only a 10-foot setback is required in a side yard, and the existing building was 30 feet away from the lot line.”

Ingalls was asked by The Vedette if she consulted the ordinances prior to advising March, and her first response was “no, not really,” but when The Vedette was asked to repeat the question, she replied that she gave a preliminary review but missed the setback specifications.

Also according to March’s timeline, the new site survey and plans were drawn for the 20-foot addition to be built on the east side of the existing office building. March was elected April 6, 2021, and Ingalls’ contract also was extended that same month.

Village ordinance 157.080 addresses yards and states that a side yard on a B-1 property be not less than 30 feet and shall be fenced and screened to restrict the view from any adjoining lots in the “R” district. It is available online for viewing.

In July, the building permit application was completed, and the architectural plans were submitted to Safebuilt for review. Keith Rooney, state operations manager for Safebuilt and present at the meeting, said that zoning review wasn’t part of their contract. In August of 2021, the building permit was approved, with no comment from the Safebuilt inspector, who reviews plans and completes inspections for the village.

It wasn’t until November that a different Safebuilt inspector noticed the setback impingement adjacent to the R-4 apartment building, and that a 12-foot variance was needed.

The variance application was filed December 3, 2021, after construction had already begun, but the stop work order wasn’t issued until January 18, after residents witnessed construction companies in the parking lot. Chairman Petreikis confirmed the stop work order would continue until the next variance public hearing on February 16.

Rooney accepted blame for the missteps at the hearing. He said, “My company, my staff blew it. We should’ve caught this.”

Former P & Z Commission Member Ken Smith, who resigned just prior to this hearing after serving 15 years, gave testimony and cited a previous case from 2005. Smith told the board that then P & Z Chairman and now Village President March instructed the 2005 committee and said, “You have to look at this variance as if nothing has been done yet.”

Smith said, “I’m making you aware that this has been done before, and it has been denied.”

In 2005, a half finished house, at 316 Delft Court, went before the Planning and Zoning Commission to request a variance. The home was only about 15 feet away from the nearest neighbor, but Peotone Village ordinance states it needs to be 30 feet away.

After the planning and zoning commission, led by chairman Dr. Peter March, recommended to the board to deny the variance, the board voted 5-0 to follow the planning and zoning commission’s recommendations. Current trustees, Mike Jones and Gary Hudson also served on the Planning and Zoning Commission in 2005. Then Trustee Dan Libertore said, “If we let this go, it shows we will bend for anything. We want stricter enforcement, not looser.”

Many people from the community attended and spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting. Carolyn Carleson, owner of adjacent property to March Family Dental, 514 S. Third Street, expressed concerns she was not contacted until after construction had begun, that construction equipment was on her property, and that construction had damaged her building and a birdhouse her late husband had erected.

Carleson said, “It doesn’t seem like it was important to most people, but it was important to me. It’s curious to me that a stop work order was not issued until this hearing, where the issue was to be resolved.”

Carleson stated she had requested information on variances that March had a decision-making process in, from 2004 to the present via FOIA.

She said, “After reviewing that information, it was evident Dr. March had previously stated all variances need to be applied for before construction is started, or the work will be removed.”

Several questions from the public were unanswerable. Resident Nancy Cross asked if this was normal for the petitioner not to be present. Kendall Smith replied that in his years of experience on the board, the petitioner was always present.

Resident Angela Grzeskowiak asked who was representing Mr. March, and Chairman Petreikis said he was not aware of anyone representing March at the hearing. The March Family Dental Facebook page posted that March would be out of the office from January 17 – 22, on the 17th, and a picture of March skiing with family on January 20.

Grzeskowiak stated, “And we’re sitting here making a decision tonight based on not having dates for said inspections. We don’t even have somebody that’s even got a photocopy of his little blue piece of paper in his permit that shows his green stamps that should say this was stamped, this was done. I saved that.”

After about an hour and 22 minutes of public comment, planning and zoning commission members discussed the variance.

Village Attorney Jim Bartley said, “It seems to me, it seems the process is okay; they screwed up the process.”

Chairman Petreikis said, “You can’t necessarily always catch a problem. Everybody’s made a mistake.”

Village Administrator Ingalls added that the 2005 situation was not comparable, as the new construction foundation was encroached on another’s property and was not a setback issue. She said this instance was human error. Ingalls also said the board is not held to a legal precedent and has the ability to review each variance on a case-by-case basis.

Board member Adam Jones made a motion to approve the variance, but it wasn’t seconded; the motion died.

Board member Alan Gillis said he was troubled the petitioner was not present and there to respond to the open questions. In his two years of being on the planning and zoning commission, the petitioner always was present.

Gillis said, “I think we have to follow the rules that we have and then apply common sense if the variance has been requested.”

Chairman Petreikis noted, “I do believe if they had come before the addition was built, I probably would’ve been okay with this to recommend to go that route.”

Gillis motioned to table the request until the next Planning and Zoning meeting on February 16, at 6 p.m., with Safebuilt providing dates and the petitioner present, which requires a continuance of the public hearing in order to have the petitioner present. The motion was seconded by commission member William Mercer and unanimously approved. The stop work order will continue until the variance request is approved.