Town considers zoning change to help save historical barns

Attempting to maintain the rural character of the community and preserve historical barns and other structures, the Town of Saukville Plan Commission on Tuesday recommended that an ordinance be drafted to make it easier for farmers to subdivide their property.

The ordinance would exempt farmsteads currently zoned for agricultural use from limits on the number of buildings and their total square footage when being subdivided to create A4- or A5-zoned lots of five acres or more.

In those cases, current zoning only allows three outbuildings to remain on the new parcel. Cumulatively, those buildings cannot total more than 2,500 square feet or take up more than 3% of the new lot.

Local townships are discovering those kinds of regulations are preventing landowners, some of them retiring farmers, from either subdividing their farmsteads and staying on their land or forcing them to tear down outbuildings, some of which are considered historical.

“We don’t want people to feel that to get their land division done they have to knock down buildings,” Plan Commission member Kevin Kimmes said at Tuesday’s meeting.

“It’s not in our interest,” commission member Tom Ravn agreed. “Our intention is to keep as much land in agriculture as we can” and maintain the town’s rural character.

The issue arose several months ago when one landowner sought to subdivide his property but under the current ordinance would be required to destroy old outbuildings.

That prompted town officials to begin discussing whether to create a historical barn registry to preserve such buildings.

“But then we thought, ‘Why get rid of any buildings?’” Kimmes recounted Tuesday.

The new ordinance, which the Plan Commission will review next month, would not count any existing buildings in a land division against the number of buildings allowed or against the 2,500-square-foot limit. 

No new buildings would be allowed to be built that would exceed the square footage limit and if an existing building were destroyed by fire or other disaster, the replacement building could not be larger than the original.

If the collection of the existing buildings exceeded the 3% lot coverage limit, the owner could apply for a conditional-use permit from the Plan Commission.

A public hearing will have to be held before any proposed ordinance could be approved.