At their regular meeting held Monday, October 9, The Elmwood Board of Trustees voted 4-2 to reject zoning ordinance amendments written to create clearly defined standards or the township's Rural Resort-1 zoning district. The up-date was taken up on the advice of township attorney Jim Young to correct deficiencies exposed in current zoning language during the planning commission's review of an application by Wilderness Development, inc for a massive destination water park. The planning commission proceeded on the re-write with the approval of the township board, and with funds allocated by the board to hire planning consultants LSL Associates of Grand Rapids and to compensate attorney Young for work in authoring the codes. Along with the endorsement of the Elmwood Planning Commission, the new standards passed a review by the Leelanau County Planning Commission. These changes to the existing RC-1 zoning have been in progress since January.

While the new standards had been carefully formulated to mirror direction provided by Elmwood's Master Plan, argument from the board majority focussed on trustees' personal opinions favoring the flexibility of individual property owners in their pursuit of maximum investment returns. Trustee Terry Lautner argued for an eight-fold increase in developable land area for the district, even though consultant Val Lasdens of LSL had demonstrated the ability of the amended language to allow a development just as intense as the one proposed by Wilderness as Glacier Bay. Lasdens was compelled to respond to Lautner by putting the eight-fold increase in perspective by observing that the resulting build-out would accommodate 5 million square feet of hard surface commercial development, a figure Lasdens compared to downtown Denver which holds roughly 12 million square feet of commercial floor space. Lasdens found such a standard difficult to reconcile with the township master plan, which speaks to outdoor recreational opportunities scaled to meet the needs of local users for the district. Trustee Jeff Howell also felt the up-dated standards should not be adopted until developable surface area was increased from 8% to 13% of property total. Trustee James O'Rourke rejected the ordinance amendment based on his feeling that the planning commission should "work with the property owners" to develop standards for the district.

In arguing for the adoption of the amendment Supervisor Derith Smith and Trustee Paul Walter cited the township's immediate exposure to legal challenges arrising from known deficiencies in the current ordinance. Smith and Walter suggested that trust placed in LSL and Mr. Young by both the board and the planning commission was based on the demonstrated ability of that team to come up with standards that were clear cut, straightforward to apply, protected the township legally, and had demonstrated support of the township's official community plan. Smith observed that accommodating the changes suggested by the board majority would require the township to engage in a significant re-examination of its master plan.

Beside the fact that the product of months of work at the planning commission level and thousands of dollars in professional compensation have been rejected by the board, the character of the debate on the issue tells Elmwood residents what they really need to know: despite referendum votes, the "unelection" of the high profile large land holders, and the complete overhaul of the township planning commission, the vested board majority has no intention of allowing even the most moderate reform of land planning and zoning to occur in Elmwood.

Interestingly, after rejecting the RR-1 ordinance amendment, The Board voted to move 17,000 additional tax payer dollars into the planning commission's 2006 budget to facilitate the creation of exactly the same kind of zoning tools for several other zoning districts. The work will be carried out by the Elmwood Planning Commission, LSL Associates, and attorney Young.