Rezoning Nightmare

In about one hour, my wife and I will be off to the City-County building in Madison, Wi. to appear at a public hearing before the county board of supervisors. We have to explain why we want to rezone from Exclusive agriculture (A1) to Exclusive agriculture (A2). This sounds simple enough, right? Not!

We want to expand our business of training dogs, and to do that, we have to construct a new building that we can use year round. Under A1, we can not construct a building for training dogs or any other animal other than a farm animal. Under A2, we can apply for a conditional use permit that will allow us to train dogs.

Next week we then have to appear before the township planning board to present our case which then they will send the results of that meeting to the county board for review.

Then on December 12th, we will appear again before a working session of the county board to answer questions that may arise from the township meeting.

On December 19th, we will appear again at a public hearing for any further discussion that may come up during the time between meetings.

Then on February 6th, we have to appear again when the county executive signs the conditional use permits and answer any questions that she might have.

Does this sound like a mess to you as much as it does to us? We applied for a building permit the second week in August. We should have the permit sometime in February.