(Undated)– A joint meeting Thursday evening of the Dickinson County Board of Supervisors and representatives of several municipalities generated a call for more uniform building codes and zoning regulations. Supervisor Tim Fairchild, who organized the meeting, said the lack of uniformity is something he finds concerning…
“One of the things that I’ve always been confused by is the resistance in Dickinson county to adopt a more uniform set of building codes and planning and zoning.”
Milford Mayor Steve Anderson said a lack of a building code is likely to lead to some serious issues down the road…
“We’ve got subdivisions here in Milford that have undersized or improperly installed water lines to all the houses in the subdivisions and every property owner is at risk at some point that that water line is going to break and it’s just a bad situation that should never have happened. But people can come in and do whatever they want and walk out and that’s the way it goes.”
Barry Sackett, a lakes area resident and attorney, said unifying could allow cities through the lakes corridor as well as the county an opportunity to share an expert that would enforce a unified code…
“We’ve got, you know, five municipalities, none of them can afford to have a highly skilled building permit review process, but could we as a collective, afford to do that? I think we could. I think that’s a 28E agreement that makes a heck of a lot of sense and we have somebody that has the ability to look at a set of plans and understand them and has been trained to do that and does that full time because they’re reviewing plans for each city and the county.”
County Supervisor Pam Jordan said now would be an opportune time to start the talks as the county and some cities start looking at updating their comprehensive use plans…
On another topic, there was also a call for attention to be paid to some of the outlying communities in Dickinson county. More specifically on things that could be done to increase interest in living in those towns.
