What types of uses should and should not be allowed in Oxford Township’s agricultural (AG) zoning district?

That was the topic of a Feb. 28 public hearing conducted by the planning commission.

The township is proposing zoning ordinance text amendments concerning permitted and special land uses in AG zoning, where the minimum lot size is 20 acres.

Some of the special uses proposed for elimination include oil and gas extraction, recreational vehicle storage, temporary housing for seasonal labor, cider mills, fertilizer, feed or seed sales facilities, farm implement sales or repair, livestock auction yards, campgrounds, golf courses and driving ranges, country clubs, colleges and universities, and demonstration farms that are open to the public.

It’s proposed that private airports, a special use currently allowed, be eliminated and replaced with “aircraft landing strips,” which would be regulated by a new set of rules included in the text amendment.

It’s also proposed that yard waste composting facilities in compliance with the federal Right to Farm Act be allowed as a special use. Commercial facilities would be excluded.

“I feel that the package that we’ve put together and submitted here is a good package,” said Planning Commissioner Jonathan Nold, who serves on the Ordinance Review Committee (ORC). “It required a lot of thought. We’ve had a lot of planners working on it.”

But some residents from the township’s northeast quadrant, a rural area commonly referred to as horse or hunt country, saw other special uses on the list that they believe should be eliminated as well.

“You need to take off churches. You need to take off . . . private schools . . . They’re not going to save hunt country and they’re not going to preserve it. They certainly don’t belong there. They belong on paved streets,” said Kallie Roesner-Meyers, a former planning commissioner who lives on Delano Rd.

Ginny Benson, a township resident who lives on Barber Rd., agreed.

“Already Kingsbury School puts a lot of traffic down Oakwood Rd. every morning and night during (the) school year,” she said. “We’re trying to avoid that. We don’t want anymore traffic out there. We don’t want these uses.”

Located at the intersection of Hosner and Oakwood roads in Addison Township, Kingsbury Country Day School is a charter public school for K-8 students. The school has been in operation since 1953.

Township Planner Don Wortman, of the Ann Arbor-based Carlisle/Wortman Associates, said prohibiting churches and schools could lead to legal issues at the federal and state levels. “If you took churches out of the AG (district), but still allowed residential (uses), you could be setting yourself up for a federal challenge (under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act),” he said. “But I would refer that to the township attorney and let them comment.”

With regard to schools, Wortman said one of Michigan’s education funding acts has “very clear limitations on what local municipalities can do.” Again, he would refer the issue to the township attorney.

Wortman noted that “usually, when you have residential (uses allowed in a zoning district), you allow churches and schools.”

Detached single-family dwellings are a permitted use in AG zoning.

Given that, if there were an attempt to eliminate churches and schools, Wortman said, “I think you’d be setting yourself up for a (legal) challenge.”

Horse country residents also opposed proposed changes that would allow, as permitted uses, family child care homes and state-licensed residential facilities as defined under state law.

AG zoning is “the place that (these facilities are) least likely to fit in,” Benson said.

She expressed her fear that “saying we should accept any licensed residential facility opens the door” for “halfway houses or drug rehab houses” and places with “pedophiles.”

“That’s the kind of stuff that we’re trying to avoid here,” she said.

Roesner-Meyers argued making such residential facilities a permitted use – something allowed by right – would have the effect of “silencing” the planning commission and the community’s “voice” and ability to “weigh in” on such places. She noted state law does allow the township to “reject” such a place when it  “oversaturates the area with residential facilities.”

Wortman said the proposed amendment is simply referencing state law for these facilities. The current ordinance allows as a permitted use a “child or adult family day care home” and an “adult foster care family home.”

“We are not changing what is currently allowed,” he said. “All we’re doing is we’re modifying it. We’re clarifying it, so that it is more consistent with state statute.”

Roesner-Meyers noted that community members have given the township “many proposals” containing zoning text amendments aimed at preserving hunt country, farmland and open space, but “they’ve been ignored by the planning commission for years now.”

Planning Commission Chairman Mike Young noted citizen input was incorporated into the proposed text amendments concerning AG zoning. “Our (ORC) has taken it’s time to review public comments from previous meetings, written documents from people out in the community . . . (and) tried to put it all together,” he said.

Commissioner Tom Berger, who serves on the ORC, said, “we took out almost a dozen uses that were currently permitted within the ordinance” and tried to create something, based on public input, “that we thought was going to be better for the AG district.”

“Maybe we didn’t hit all the nails on the head,” he said.

Due to claims that some members of the public didn’t receive the information they requested regarding the proposed AG zoning changes prior to the Feb. 28 meeting, planning commissioners voted 4-0 to postpone taking any action regarding the issue until their next regular meeting.