Campton Hills trustee hopefuls square off on zoning, parking issues

CAMPTON HILLS – Issues emerging in the contested Campton Hills race for trustee in the April 4 consolidated election seem to center on disagreements about parking rights and a new zoning ordinance.

Six of the eight trustee candidates for three four-year seats – incumbents Wendy White Eagle, Susan George and Charles Cappell, along with challengers Janet Burson, Timothy Morgan and Nicolas Boatner – attended a League of Women Voters of Central Kane County forum March 2 at the Campton Hills Village Hall.

For more than an hour, the candidates fielded questions before a group of about 40 people.

Boatner, Burson and Morgan condemned the current administration and urged voters to change the board, while incumbents White Eagle, George and Cappell made the case for their continued service.

“The village right now is at a crossroads. We have a choice. We can have one of two directions. One, the fundamental reasons why the village was incorporated to protect the rural way of life, to avoid the annexation, development of large communities that would have impacted our open spaces, our aquifers, traffic,” Boatner said. “The other path is what I see – we are really starting to rule and govern with an iron fist.”

Burson piggybacked on that theme and said, “Sadly, our current board has failed the promise of Campton Hills, unanimously passing a zoning ordinance that residents did not want. It was a power play that fractured our community.”

When the zoning ordinance was still in the discussion stage, some residents were concerned about how it would affect their ability to keep horses and chickens. Village President Michael Tyrrell had said at the time that it was, “Much ado about nothing.”

When the village incorporated in 2007, it used Kane County’s zoning ordinance. The work last year was to update it to the village’s needs, Tyrrell said.

“The incumbent administration speaks to protecting our rural heritage. They tell us their plans to regulate us are how they protect us,” Burson said. “Clearly, that is not true. When I knock on doors, every resident tells me they assume such sweeping change would involve a referendum.”

“I was really taken aback by the zoning laws,” Morgan said. “At my house, I can have six horses now, but I can have only three dogs. It sounds like there were some wrong things that were put together in the zoning.”

Boatner characterized the zoning ordinance as an attempt to “micromanage the people of Campton Hills.”

Morgan called it a way the village could treat the community like it was a homeowners association – which is what he left behind when he moved to Campton Hills.

Cappell defended the zoning ordinance.

“Your acts or negligence affects your neighbors. The new zoning ordinance, which mobilized a lot of these candidates whose faces are before us, are really kind of misrepresenting what those zoning ordinances are all about,” Cappell said. “They really balance the aesthetics of the village, its rural character, its ecological capacities and protect nuisance from intruding on another person’s private property rights. Zoning is where public awareness and enlightened self-interest come home to roost.”

White Eagle said the new zoning law expanded residents’ rights to own horses and chickens, as well as codified balancing those rights.

Another area that is “symbolic of the fracture right now within the village and its residents” is the parking lot outside the Village Hall and police department, Boatner said.

The village offices are located within a larger shopping center, Fox Mill Square, just off Route 64.

“It’s a very disheartening story,” Boatner said. “A staple in our community, a small local business was really – in my opinion – unfairly picked on, rather than sitting down at a table and having an adult conversation with some business owners about how to manage parking in a parking lot. It’s very disappointing.”

White Eagle said the issue evolved from some people being upset that they could not park in front of the lot where Village Hall is located, right across from Old Towne Pub & Eatery.

“There is a lot of parking that is available throughout this complex,” White Eagle said. “It comes from one of the local restaurants. If you walk behind that restaurant, there is a tremendous amount of parking back there. … Folks from the pub next door were being restricted from parking out front. I asked the question, ‘Who owns the lot right in front of us, right here?’ The lot lines actually means the village owns that parking.”

Cappell said Village Hall is in use by residents during the day, and parking at night is for board and committee meetings.

“There’s ample parking,” Cappell said.

Other issues included development, preserving open space and village finances.

The forum is available online at www.facebook.com.