Planning Commission will begin the meeting by standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Underground indivisible liberty of Justice Brown.

The first item on the agenda for this evening is the approval of the minutes of the May 4, 2026 meeting.

These minutes were distributed to the commissioners in advance of today's meeting.

Do any of the commissioners have any changes to those minutes?

Okay.

Seeing none, I will move to uh approve the minutes of May 4, 2026 meeting of the planning commission.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second by Commissioner Golas.

All in favor?

Aye, unanimous.

The uh next item on the agenda for this evening is consideration of ordinance.

Ordinance 2025 non-conforming uses update.

Uh and this is amending the code of the township of Radner, uh, Chapter 280 zoning-nonconforming uses.

Uh the agenda notes that it was uh dated December 3, 2025.

Not sure uh was this was this a version that came to us previously or no, the planning commission has not seen this yet.

Okay.

And and with that, uh Mr.

Nelson, maybe you could help introduce this uh proposed ordinance and give us a little context for the consideration.

Yeah, I'm still calling up my computer, but I can give you some overview right now.

Okay.

Um so there are three well, let me step back.

We're required to recognize nonconformities that are more kind of normally known as grandfathering, uh, because people have property rights in the location of their buildings, the size of their lots, the activities that they're operating on these on these lots, uh, so that when an order a zoning ordinance is enacted or zoning ordinances changed, um those pre-existing buildings, lots, and uses under our both state and federal constitution have the right to continue.

We can't take them away unless we want to pay to take them away.

And in reality, even a township like Radner does that does not have that type of money.

So what has been done is we've you know we've created uh this principle called nonconforming nonconformities, and we have a non-conforming lot is one of the three, and a non-conforming lot is a lot that's generally undersized or too narrow.

We have minimum lot sizes that we require before a lot can be built upon, and we have minimum lot widths that are required before a lot can be built built upon, but there are lots, especially in a place like Radner that you know pre-exist these rules of regulations by a century.

Um so we have to have you know regulations in the zoning ordinance kind of saying, hey, this is how we're gonna handle these sorts of lots.

Likewise, we have non-conforming buildings.

These are buildings that generally speaking don't meet the required setbacks.

They're you know, too, you know, too close to the road, they're too close to a side yard, or two or side lot line, they're too close to a rear lot line.

You sometimes might have buildings that are too big for the lot, they they exceed the building coverage limitations or they exceed the amount of you know the impervious surface limitations for a lot.

But once again, especially in a place like Radner, we have buildings that you know were built 200 years before zoning was enacted.

Um, and so we have to recognize that they have a right to continue in existence even though they do not comply with our zoning.

And then lastly, and these are this is really probably the most complicated.

We have non-conforming uses, and these are activities that have been performed on a property before zoning was enacted.

Uh, you can think about you know a shop that existed on a corner for you know years and years and years, and the zoning was enacted, and that shop was now in a residential district, and you know, commercial uses aren't allowed.

Well, you know, we couldn't just go in and say to the shop owner, oh sorry, you're out of business.

You know, they were they're allowed to continue operating.

Um they're actually allowed to kind of continue not only to operate, but also grow and expand in normal uh ways that that sort of activity would grow and expand elsewhere.

Um so once again, we have to have zoning regulations kind of recognizing this fact and controlling how these nonconforming uses grow, expand, maybe change to a new nonconforming use or change to a conforming use.

Um expand on the lot.

All those sorts of things.

Our current ordinance language is not well written.

It kind of mushes these three different types of nonconformities and regulates them all at once, and that really doesn't work.

Um the new language that you have before you was really designed to kind of separate these three different types of nonconformities into distinct areas, have distinct regulations for each one of them, um, and have the regulations be a little more clear so that you know whoever is reading the regulations are all coming up with the same understanding of what they mean and what they require.

So that's the same thing.

So this is this is uh an attempted overhaul to uh replace and improve upon what's already existing in the code.

Okay, um I guess we could start with uh any comments from commissioners at this point.

How does the sort of the uh the comprehensive plan and the downtown master plan?

How do they address these things?

So I what what are the synergies between those two initiatives and this?

I don't think um I'm not intimately familiar with either of those documents, but generally speaking, those documents don't generally address the kind of inner workings of nonconformities.

Most of them will will acknowledge that they exist, and certainly in a place like Wayne are gonna acknowledge that, hey, we need to deal with them, and um, but as far as the actual language of the zoning ordinance goes, I don't think you know those documents are gonna not get into those specifics, and this ordinance wasn't written in you know, looking at those two documents saying, okay, we're trying to reflect what's going on with those those documents.

This ordinance was more written to try to basically make sure we comply with the law and we remain constitutional, you know, in in compliance with the constitutions.

Did something specific initiate this kind of rewriting or drafting of this article?

Was there some the township over the last decade has had multiple problems with the current language?

Um with developers kind of basically taking advantage of loopholes with issues with different staff members coming up with different well, I read it this way, or while I read it that way, which is certainly not a good thing.

Um so the you know, this has been issue, these issues have been ongoing for a long, long time.