Entries in Zoning (1)
Getting soft in my old age
This story is a strange one folks. I've been mulling it over in my mind for over a week and still don't know what to think about it. It comes to us from Mukwonago (WI) via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Sherry Towns says she spends about $50,000 annually to sustain a formal French garden with six fountains on her 111-acre rural estate in the rolling fields of rural southern Waukesha County.
Towns, who grew up amid Mukwonago-area farmsteads, can expect to pay even more this summer if Town of Mukwonago police ticket her on allegations that she's running an illegal wedding service in her lush, 10-acre garden, known as Millennium Gardens.
An illegal wedding service?
The town argues that Towns is running a wedding business on a property that's zoned for farming. Towns can hold weddings at the gardens if she first obtains a conditional use permit from the town that allows her to expand the use of her land beyond farming.
The town has struck down three requests from Towns for a permit.
See what I mean...this is a strange story.
The Millennium Gardens contains eye-catching statues, bubbling springs, granite-lined avenues, streams, natural coves, fountains, gazebos and a colonnade on a hill, publicity material from its Web site says.
..."We personally spend three times whatever gardeners' fees we have ever received from brides for events here."
Presently there are five weddings booked there for this summer.
Town officials are not "heartless," which is why a court order to halt the weddings will not be sought, (Town Attorney John) Macy said.
I'm normally a stickler when it comes to Zoning. Even when I don't like it.
Maybe I'm just an old softie...
But, I'm having a hard time with this Town decision?
Al Arnold
7 Comments