The system worked!

Since our operation here is split over two townships and we use different equipment at the two locations, we decided to put up a barn on the remote property to protect our equipment AND the numerous children in the area who might be inclined to think a folding disk is fun to climb on. Declined by the twp on the basis that you can't have a barn on the property if you don't have a house. Very broad ambiguous ordinance which would easily fail in court, but we did not want to ante up the five figure sum to fight it in court. Zoning board of appeals agreed with us and is requesting the ordinance be clarified. AND we get our permit by unanimous vote.

The only guy who showed up to oppose us was the guy who sold us the land. He got his money but he wants to keep control of the land too, I guess. Made a complete fool of himself.

Nice to hear it works....once in a while!

Glad to hear it all worked out.That has to be one of the stupidest ordinances on the books. Around here a lot of people buy ground and build the garage or barn first. It gives them some place to work out of when ready to build a house.

Here in Ohio, any building that is used for agriculture, or the storage of equipment is exempt from zoning.

I was a zoning inspector. The thing is not as stupid as it sounds. Imagine you lived in a nice single-family zone, all around you nice single-family housing, but there was an empty lot next to you. Some guy bought it and put up a huge machinery shed / barn, and worked on his stuff, stored all his machnery, inside and out. Worked on stuff at night. Drove in and out at all hours. The lot has become commercial, or agricultural, or maybe industrial, but any event, the area is no longer a complete intact single "Zone" of single family. The concept is the entire "Zone" is reserved for one usage.

Glad we left communist Mich.

Reading posts like this makes me so glad I live in MO.

If the system was 'working' you wouldn't have had the hassle in the first place.

What you are talking would be for in town, not out on a farm.

You are comparing apples to oranges here. If someone owns land in the country and wants to use the land to build a barn it is his land. It is too bad that someone doe not like it . They could have bought the land and left it bare but no, they want to restrict the owners right to private property without due compensation.

Zoning in an urban area may be a necessity but not in the rural country side.

Contact your County Ag Agent and your Farm Bureau agent they know the the AG laws and can give you advice.

Glad to hear you got it worked out. I am on a planning commission, and we have had multiple farmers requesting permits for barns, our ordinance makes it clear, if the property is zoned agricultural and you are asking to build an agricultural building, it is approved with no special requests. If someone has a 2 acre lot and wants to build a barn, there has to be a permit for a home or an existing home as that is obviously a residential application.

FBH, I hear you and agree with what you are saying. Here in the twp where we live we have a family who bought ten acres, all but two of which are unusable wetland. They built a house and started raising chickens and hogs under the porch. Their home is at the entrance to a nice residential subdivision. When challenged by zoning they invoked Michigan's Right to Farm act and the township backed off. Now the poor neighbors have to deal with a cow and sheep as well as the hogs and chickens plus the people have started up a web based mini-farm and are trying to sell feed, chicks, etc. It smells to high heaven and is a blight on the neighborhood. As a result of this and similar situation, Right to Farm was revised to give townships more control. This can create a hardship on real farms and that will have to be worked out. The township where we are putting up the building is manned by a very good group of people. They are actually trying to help promote farming. They have good reason for what they are doing, just going about it a little wrong.

For the record, our land is zoned agricultural and is surrounded by the same. The first thing we did when we bought it was remove several tons of trash dumped in the center of it by the fella who showed up to fight our building. We mowed and cleaned all the ditches on the frontage, replaced the fence and planted flowering trees along the road. While we were doing all this we rented most of the land to another neighbor. Nice thing was that the board denied our request for variance. Instead they declared our building a true farm building and directed zoning to give us a land use permit for same. That means no inspections and no restrictions. Just have to comply with setbacks. Good deal.

It is pretty much the same here. Land use permit for ag buildings. Small fee and no inspections. But they added another ordinance late in the game that says if you want a STORAGE building there must be a home first. We got tied up with that one. All worked out now, though!

Yes. We had two attorneys providing advice. One represents townships and the other is a farm advocate. We also had two experts on farm land use from Michigan State University providing input and rendering opinions as to the validity of the ordinances involved. No one, not even the township, disagreed with the validity of our claim. Township just needed to cover their bases. Reasonable group of folks. I can tell you I have dealt with a lot worse. We are good now.

Yep, glad I live in MO. We can do anything we want to, at any time, any way. No permits needed for anything.

Gene

Dave H,
I also went before our zoning board about 6 yrs ago wanting to put up a barn on my vacant land to house my tractors and such. Got turned down. Neighbors all turned out in force to fight it. I "COULD" have fought it as the land is zoned agriculture and an ag building can be built without any permits here in Michigan. But decided it was better to keep peace with the neighbors as I want to build a house on it in a few years. Instead, they got to look at my unhoused equipment over the years from their backyards.

I'm curious. You say the RTF act was changed here in Michigan to give townships more control. What were the changes? I've read it several times and don't recall any restrictions.

My MO friends have also told me of the problems of clusters of trailer houses with raw sewage running everywhere and the druggies and worse occupying them. It's nice to have fewer restrictions, but some are usually needed.

We (I) lived in Michigan when the RTF law was passed, the whole concept was to prevent folks that build houses out in the country on agricultural land in agricultural districts from stopping folks that were farming from implementing and using standard/accepted agricultural practices and farming. Seems to me that building a storage building for agricultural equipment would fall in the realm of standard /accepted practices and they were wrong to deny or impede the process. What many townships are doing is blocking barns, shops and storage buildings from being built on property with out homes so the barn/shop/storage building doesn't become a sub standard residential building erected with out proper permits and sanitary systems. I understand the township's problem but you don't get to break the law because it's easier that doing your job.

Well, yeah, that is exactly what the township told me. They had people living in tar paper shacks and old semi tractor trailers. What they need to do is zone against that and not folks like me and they understand that too. Problem is, and you may not know this, MANY small communities dropped their zoning enforcement in the the bad economy. Some townships were having as few as 0-2 building permit apps a year. Folks was getting away with murder in the interim.

The Legislature is currently trying to rewrite
our RTF legislation, they are trying to change
the definition to include "commercial" farms,
instead of using agricultural production, and
they are trying to include the "wind farms"
into it so DTE and the like will no longer have
to pay personal property tax, most people would
assume it is the nnalert party wanting these
changes, they would be wrong, it's the
nnalert. By changing the definition to
"commercial" eliminates those of us who have
small family farms who may or may not sell any
of their product on the open market, thus
leaving us at the will of the townships rule.
Very bad thing to allow to happen, I have been
communicating with my state representatives
directly and weekly. So far they claim the
bill has no traction and should go away by the
end of the year.

I owned a large farm in Indiana in a county with no zoning. Trash, trailers, shacks, barns made out of cedar posts and tar paper. When I retired I wanted to live on a farm, but there was no way that I was going to invest in a nice house, good barns and expensive fencing....to suddenly be living next to a junk pile.

I sold that farm and bought land in a county and state with reasonable zoning rules.

Zoning works for you, as well as against you.

Dave H (MI):

It's a question of nit-picking over technicalities. Just label the barn as an "Ag Building" (which it is) and NOT as a "Storage Building". You CAN store things in an ag building.

:>)

(quoted from post at 10:48:00 11/12/14) Well, yeah, that is exactly what the township told me. They had people living in tar paper shacks and old semi tractor trailers. What they need to do is zone against that and not folks like me and they understand that too.

Click to expand...

Except, how do they know that you're "folks like me(you)?"

You can say anything you want when they ask you. Any person with half a lick of sense is not going to incriminate themselves at the outset. You could very easily partition off a corner of this new building and set up housekeeping. Now suddenly we have Farmer Fred living in his barn, using the bushes for his bathroom...

Well the System only works when there are law abiding citizens on the Township Board and people with some "Common Sense"!

Yep there is that word, "Common Sense". Well I will submit a story to you all on here that may just make you set up and take notice. The Missouri folks will have some knowledge about this issue as well. I am a rancher from Minnesota and this is what a bunch bumbling fools on a Township Board has done to me and what it has cost me and the taxpayers of Helga Township in northern Minnesota.

I enrolled in a contract with the Federal Government in the EQIP Livestock program to install paddock fencing and underground water systems for rotational grazing and protection of ground water runoff due to soil compaction and the like. The program is a good one and I recommend it to all farmers and ranchers. I hired an excavation contractor to remove the surface rocks that inhibited my completion of the project. Both my contractor and myself were contacted by phone by the township and told that we needed a five times after the fact fee ($2,340) for a mining permit to take the rocks off the land. They threatened a Cease and Desist order if I did not stop. You can about guess what I told them on the phone. They came with a piece of paper that was hand written and signed by the chairman of the board and the land use administrator telling me to cease and desist all operations.

The following evening there was a town board meeting. I took the paper and threw it in the face of the board and told them that this is not a valid Cease and Desist and told them that if they wanted one, I suggested that they get one signed by a judge and serve it according to the Civil Rules of Procedure. Now none of you know this, but I am not your average rancher. I hold two degrees and one is in law, I was a former investigator for the state, and I teach mining law. Picking surface rock on a ranch out of a pasture to allow for the tillage and reseeding of pasture grasses is not remotely close to mining of mineral materials.

After the cease and desist, they later came with one signed by a judge and served appropriately. We then locked horns in court and the judge ruled that my interest in the federal contract and the losses that I may incur is more important than that interest of the township. The township presses on for a decision on the merits of the ordinance and the mining clause and the judge did a 180 from his original decision and ruled that townships have the right to restrict agricultural practices in MN and he went on to say that because excavation is defined as anything greater than 18" deeper than the surface, that a mining permit for the excavation of mineral materials is required. Makes a guy wonder how that works for digging graves and septics? Don't dare to sink that chisel plow in too deep or we will have to get a permit..........So basically the judge issued a dismissal through what is called a "Summary Judgement" meaning that the township won the second battle and we still did not have our jury trial yet on the facts since this was a constitutional violation claim.

So then of course I couldn't let this BS go on because in order to get an Interim or conditional use permit, it requires a 10 posting prior to the hearing at the town hall and then neighbors can comment and they can take up to 60 days to decide if you get one or not and it is an initial $475 and they are able to require you to post a bond until the stuff is completed to their liking. I don't think so boys! How do you think that works out with the average farmer who has one guy digging and one guy planting and you have 10,000 acres? You don't have time to stop and wait for no permit!

So being the stubborn person I am about setting these boys straight, I appealed to the Court of Appeals. We had that a few weeks ago and the Judges just thrashed the township. Asking their attorney why they thought that they were the only township in MN that thought they could do this to a farmer and if the conditional use process was honerous for this type of activity and farming. The attorney was dumb enough to say yes.

Now after the favorable opinion comes out rescinding the judges ridiculous ruling only to save a township from shelling out big bucks for violating my constitutional right to farm with normal farming practices. It gets better folks. Another judge in the same 9th judicial district flies his radio controlled model airplanes out at the town board chairman's farm and yes you guess it, all without a permit. the chairman's best friend across the road has 3 businesses on his farm without permits. Every person on the board right now and many of the previous board have violations that have not been addressed eve though complaint letters have been forwarded about them to the board. So can you imagine how much fun it will be when we question all of them in the upcoming jury trial and all the skeletons come out?

So you are all wondering what this has cost. Well I have not been able to put cattle in these unfinished paddocks for 3 years in the most profitable three years in the history of livestock sales and marketing this world have ever seen. I have spent over $100,000 in legal fees and other costs and the Township is well over $200,000 in costs to the taxpayers. The worst of the costs are yet to come to the township as the jury will determine what fee will be needed to deter others from doing the same to a farmer. They only did this to me, all others around me have not been told to stop or to pay a fee.

Three other states have heard this issue at the Supreme Court level. Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa have all found in favor of the farmer or rancher saying that they own all surface rocks and sell or dispose of them as they see fit without a permit or license. Minnesota is comprised of 58% of agricultural land. Do you really think that this state is going to put up with that crap? Nope, and if the Nation would want 5 local people in control of the food sources of the world they would have made USDA and NRCS offices have local employees not federal employees, but no, they would never leave that kind of control up to five bumbling idiots because of the very thing that has happened to me in my case. So what do you all think about that? Anyone wanting information can contact me and I surely hope you contact Collin Peterson's office because that fool was chairman of the AG committee when this program became law as part of the farm bill and he has been called 20 times and has done nothing to introduce legislation to protect farmers in Minnesota. Spread the word so farmers know this is going on before we all have to get permits is we want to pick rocks.