On May 1, Louis Kovach gave Van Buren Township $1,000 to have his lot split request of the former Coy Kendall greenhouse property considered by the Parcel Division Board.
On Friday, Linda Stevenson, Executive Assistant/Assessment Coordinator, said the Parcel Division Board is made up of DPW Director Tom McDonald, Planning and Economic Development Director Terry Carroll, and herself.
They will consider the splits, but she said the flag lots included are a problem.
She said the plan doesn’t meet the lot split ordinance or, possibly, the Land Division Act.
She said actually Kovach should have been charged $1,250, rather than the $1,000, because the charge is $250 per application review for each new lot.
Stevenson said, as of Friday, the Parcel Division Board had not met. She said it usually takes a week for a decision on a split.
When asked if the board will explain why it denied the split and how to get an approval, she said it would. But it would cost again for the revised request.
Supervisor Paul White said lot splits go to the ZBA because of the flag lots and Kovach refused to go to the ZBA.
When questioned by the Independent, Supervisor White backed down and agreed that an issue can’t go to the ZBA until it has first been turned down by the township and the township hadn’t turned it down yet.
Stevenson said the township will probably turn it down. But, she said she has seen the ZBA approve splits that the township has denied.
Kovach claimed that Homer Morris had applied for the split in the past and paid a fee, but Stevenson knew nothing about it. Susan Ireland would have been in her position if Morris had asked for a split in past years.
The Independent asked to see Stevenson’s file on the property and the building department’s file on the property, but White did not authorize that, saying the Independent would have to file a Freedom of Information Act request, which it did on Friday, asking only to review the files, with no copies requested.
Finally, on Tuesday, the Independent was allowed to see the township’s files on the greenhouse property. The drawings by Bryce Kelley, which Kovach said where a part of the record, were not included in the files.