Image

Saline City Council wants more time to consider an ordinance allowing accessory dwelling units in the city.
At Monday’s meeting, council voted to postpone a vote to adopt ordinance 856, which defines, permits and regulates accessory dwelling units. The ordinance would allow people in R2 neighborhoods to convert garages and other secondary structures into apartments. Many council members see the units as a way to bring more affordable housing to the city.
The ordinance has been considered by the Code Review Committee, the city’s planning consultants, planning commission and the Historic District Commission.
Monday night, council had a chance to pass the ordinance.
Councillor Dean Girbach expressed the most concern with the proposal, Girbach is the city council’s liason to the planning commission. He believes planning commission wasn’t aware of all of the ordinance’s ramifications when it was approved.
Girbach’s biggest concern is that a series of corresponding ordinance changes would allow a property owner to construct a 24-foot tall garage or accessory building. Currently, garages are limited to 15 feet tall. Girbach said that as a significant change for the city, especially since setback rules haven’t changed.
“It’s alwasy been a concern with large auxiliary buildings that they’d overshadow the lots next to them,” Girbach said.
The ordinance was written for R2 zoning districts as a pilot project with the expectation that if things go wel, it will be expanded to other zoning districts.
Councillor Janet Dillon said she had some concerns about whether the city has any way to prevent homeowners using accessory dwelling units as short term rental units.
Dillon, Girbach and Mayor Brian Marl all suggeted the need to consider regulations for Air B&Bs.
Councillor Dillon made a motion to postpone consideration of the motion until the July 10 meeting. Council approved the motion unanimously.
Partly Cloudy , with a high of 63 and low of 39 degrees. Sunny in the morning, cloudy overnight.
No, the motion to approve & adopt was made by Ceo, seconded by Lesch. If you're interested in an unedited/unredacted version of Monday's meeting, the link to the video recording of our budget work session and regular meeting is provided below -
Thank you to those Council members who support the citizens and the Rec Center.
Please note, the rec center now requires 1/3 to almost 1/2 of its operations be funded by the City of Saline taxpayers. Approximately 10% of our City population uses the facility, while 2/3 of the members are non-resident. It’s time the non City residents of the Saline community pays its fair share.
What happened with the funding for the needed repairs at the Recreation Center? With all of the programs and community services provided at the Recreation Center, the nearby communities spending tens of millions of dollars to build new Recreation Centers, and the number of members/high usage for the Center and part
The mayor and city council love to spend taxpayer dollars frivolously. More and more $$$ into the rec center, that needs to stop. We still don’t have drinkable water and yet the city keeps raising rates. Can’t speak for everyone but I would much rather have clean water than a “lazy river!”
Sorry, Toby Crotty. Do not align to your assessment or thoughts. While nearby communities are spending tens of millions of dollars to build Recreation Centers (because of their value to citizens and communities), Saline is in the fortunate position of already having a very good facility in place which now needs to
You avoided my main point. The rec center is a nice amenity for those that use it. However, it is not a necessity. Clean safe water that we pay exorbitant rates for IS a necessity for EVERYONE!
The unprofessional behavior while in the supposed role of being a journalist when talking to that protester is ridiculous. The incorrect information and “facts” you spewed during the conversation are just par for the course. Thanks for showing up!
I agree with your comments about this journalist. I use the word journalist loosely here, as a journalist should be bringing forth the views of the people they are interviewing, not bringing their obvious bias into every forced conversation.
I understand the right 4 peaceful protests, why expose children to hate and show disrespect to our flag, what is that teaching the children. As a Korean Veteran I oppose anyone disrespecting our countries FLAG, shame on the protesters,