Town OKs moratorium on conditional use permits

The Belgium Town Board on Monday unanimously approved an ordinance that puts a temporary moratorium on conditional use permits.

The moratorium is for 120 days — expiring on July 29 — with the option to extend it by as many as two months.

The town will use the time to update its zoning ordinance.

The move is in response to the state passing a new law in 2017 called Act 67 that “has really changed the way that all municipalities in Wisconsin are looking at conditional uses,” Zoning Administrator Charlie Parks said in a discussion of the moratorium in February.

“We need to abide by that, and it’s made it quite burdensome for municipalities now to allow for the conditional uses. A lot of that discretionary power has been taken away from the towns.”

The Plan Commission is slated to discuss the zoning ordinance at its April 17 meeting.

Parks said he expects the discussion to take about six months.

“You just need time to sit down and thoughtfully go through this stuff,” he said.

“We need to take a look at what we have listed as conditional uses and see if it’s good for the town or bad for the town.”

The town is expected to consult with its attorney and the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

The town’s zoning ordinance is about 65 pages long.

“The problem is as you make it bigger it takes a legal scholar not only to draft it but also to defend it,” Town Chairman Tom Winker said in February.

A public hearing on the moratorium was held before the board voted.