By Tom Gilchrist
For The Advertiser
ARBELA TWP. — Mary C. Warren is the Arbela Township clerk and a member of the township Planning Commission, but some township residents say she hasn’t obtained a special-use permit for a business operating at her home address.
“Everybody’s got one but you, Mary, and I don’t understand that,” township resident Gary Rooney told the Arbela Township Board of Trustees at their regular meeting Monday night.
“That’s because ours was 30 years ago,” Warren, the township clerk since 1976, told the audience of about 30 people. “Back then they didn’t do special land uses. They (issued) variances, and we got a variance to have that business. If you drive by my home, you wouldn’t even know there was a business there. It’s not as if we’ve got junk cars sitting all over, and everything else.”
According to Warren, she and her husband, Jack, operate First Klass Glass at their home property at 9451 Belsay Road north of Birch Run Road. Mary Warren said the business makes fiberglass motorcycle seats in a pole barn built in 1983, and that her husband moved the business from the home’s attached garage into the pole barn at that time.
“That’s when we got the variance,” Mary Warren said. “The ordinance that we have now wasn’t in effect then, and back then they gave variances when you wanted to have a business in a building not attached to your house, and the variance stays as long as we had it.”
A township ordinance authorizes the seven-member Planning Commission — Mary Warren is a Commission member and its secretary — to approve special land
See ARBELA A3
uses, subject to a review process.
Township Supervisor Kenneth Panek said the Warrens’ property is in a district zoned for agriculture. He said the Warrens have no proof that they have a special-use permit.
“I don’t see any evidence that they received it,” Panek told The Advertiser. “They have run (the business) quietly, but some people have got wind of it.”
Panek said he has received a special-use permit from the township Planning Commission that allows him to fix automobiles at his home address. Planning Commission member Gary Woelzlein said he obtained a special-use permit for a business at his home address.
Township Planning Commission member James Bucy questioned Mary Warren about the variance that she says allows her business to operate at her home property.
“Are there any other businesses in the township that operate with a variance like that?” Bucy asked.
“Oh yeah — I’d have to look them up, but yeah,” Warren said.
“If you can look them up, why can’t you look yours up?” Bucy responded.
Such documents have vanished, according to Warren.
“My office is not locked, and my files are not locked, and it sure is weird that these files disappeared, but they’re gone,” Warren said. “I keep meticulous records, and why wouldn’t I keep them of my own property?”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” Rooney said.
Warren told The Advertiser that she has obtained a “sworn statement” from Richard “Ike” Latham, chairman of the township Zoning Board of Appeals 30 years ago, indicating First Klass Glass received a variance.
But at Monday’s meeting, township Trustee Wayne Schultz told Warren that a variance “isn’t a special-use permit.”
Panek said township Zoning Administrator Tim Anderson could look at residents’ zoning questions about the Warrens’ business.
But Planning Commission Chairman James Kribs defended the Warrens.
“That was 30 some years ago and Mary provided everything she could get her hands on — where it was published in the paper, a sworn statement from (Latham), and if it isn’t good enough for (critics), then that’s just too bad, the way I look at it, because I’m getting tired of hearing it at all these meetings,” Kribs said.
In other business Monday, the township board reappointed Pete Mowery to a three-year term on the township Zoning Board of Appeals.