Big buildings in a residential area not allowed, yet

Two Electric City residents found out it isn’t going to be easy to change the city’s comprehensive plan so they can build larger accessory sheds than the code allows.

Mark Payne and Mike Dennis along with others, appeared before the city’s planning commission hoping to convince its members to allow larger and taller steel buildings than currently allowed in R-2 zoning.

Members of the planning commission stated they didn’t have any problem with that and it motivated the two to come to the council with their interest.

Dennis had appeared before the council several months ago with drawings of what he wanted to do.

Mayor Jerry Sands and City Clerk Jackie Perman both explained that the process of changing anything in the comprehensive plan was a long process and that it had to go before several layers of government.

Perman told the two that the process could take well over a year.

She said that public hearings would have to be held, and that there could be objections to building large and high buildings in a residential area.

Dennis said that he had hoped to start his accessory building by next spring, but was told that the process would take far longer than that.

Sands steered the pair back to the planning commission, saying that city planners serving on the advisory board would need to go through the comprehensive plan to see how many things would have to be changed.

Perman said that there would be a number of places in the plan that would be affected.