Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
SYRACUSE - Things got a little heated at times during the special Syracuse Town Council meeting Wednesday morning to resolve two issues left unresolved at last week’s regular council meeting.
One issue was a paved road/alley that the town had been maintaining for over 60-70 years but discovered it was not actually a town road.
The issue came to light when a former property owner, Jean Niles, died and her property was sold to three different owners. Two of the lots were bare lots and when the owner’s representative went to the Board of Zoning Appeals to get a variance to build, it was discovered that the town of Syracuse had never declared it a road. Several property owners were at last week’s meeting but two of them, Nathan Lambert and Larry Siegel, who is a council member but owns a property in question, were not present, so Council President Nathan Scherer wanted to give them an opportunity to weigh in.
Lambert said he was concerned about snow removal and trash pickup if the town didn’t maintain the road, but he didn’t want to relinquish his rights to the property. He said he has structures right next to the road that he wouldn’t be able to rebuild if something were to happen to them because of setbacks if the town declared it a town road.
Siegel said he bought waterfront property at 112 N. Huntington St. and owns from Huntington Street to the water, and he wasn’t interested in having an easement and a road going between them.
“I don’t want a house and a boat lot — I want the waterfront property that I have. I have no problem with people driving through there as they always have,” he said.
He said he had an idea to put an accessory building or small cottage on the lot but wouldn’t be able to do that with setback requirements if there was an easement. Siegel’s solution was to have the three new property owners give the town an easement and leave everything else as is with the town maintaining the entire road.
Town attorney Jay Rigdon said the property owners could make that agreement with each other but not to the town as the town can declare that easement on its own if it should choose. One of the new owners was present and she owns the lot with the house on it, and she didn’t want the town to take her chunk of land.
Rigdon explained that if the town were to declare it a road, a town right-of-way, she would still own the land, the town would just have a right-of-way like it does now and would maintain it as it does now. Rigdon said the town could choose to do nothing and let the property owners work it out on their own, but the town would no longer maintain it. None of the property owners wanted the town to cease maintaining it, but a few of the council members, with the exception of Siegel, said they shouldn’t have been maintaining it if they didn’t own it.
The discussion went back and forth for a while. Rigdon pointed out that this “wouldn’t have been a problem until one individual decided to make a point.”
That individual blocked the road so the neighbors didn’t have access to their homes. If the town chose not to declare it a road, any of those property owners could do that again or set a building right in the paved right-of-way. Councilman Paul Stoelting said if they did nothing now, it would just come up again later.
Siegel was adamant against it, he kept insisting the three new property owners should give easements and the town should continue to maintain the whole road, saying there are similar situations in other parts of town. A son of one of the property owners, who had her property blocked, asked if the council could just remove the setback requirements Lambert and Siegel were concerned about. The council said that was not their role, that was a BZA decision.
Stoelting made the motion to declare and recognize the entire existing asphalted section from north-south, from Huntington Street to Medusa Court, an official town road. Councilwoman Cindy Kaiser seconded the motion, and the motion passed 3-1 with Bill Musser voting against and Siegel abstaining.
Redistricting Council Seats
The other action the council took after much discussion was hiring a firm to do the required redistricting and, at the same time, changing the makeup of the council from five district seats to three district seats and two at-large seats.
Scherer wanted to make this change now while they had to do the redistricting and before next year’s election when two council seats - Siegel’s district one seat and Stoelting’s district two seat - will be up for re-election. Scherer said they’d be running for at-large seats instead of a district seat.
Siegel said district 5, which is Musser’s district, has grown large with the apartments and the Kern Road annexation so they should just redistribute some of that district. He said the town was set up to have people representing the districts in which they lived. He argued all seats were at-large seats because the whole town votes for all the seats.
Scherer said that didn’t make them at-large seats and said his whole reason was to get more people to run for office. He used former councilman Tom Hoover as an example, saying if he had an at-large seat he could’ve remained on the council instead of having to give up his seat because he moved. Siegel said at the time Hoover moved, Kern Road wasn’t in the town districts, so he would’ve had to give up his seat anyway. Siegel suggested they wait a year and remove district 5 and make that an at-large seat and redistribute some of that district into the other four. He argued with what Scherer was asking could create a situation where he and two of his neighbors could run the town and it wouldn’t be representative.
Rigdon said that could happen with at-large seats, that three people from one neighborhood could all run for office.
Scherer said, “Anything we can do to encourage the amount of people willing to run is a net benefit.” He then made the motion and withdrew the motion for more discussion.
Rigdon advised the council they had to make the decision now so the firm they are hiring has direction on how to redistrict, whether it’s five or three or four. He said the benefit of hiring them beside the fact that they’re professionals is “they don’t have a dog in the fight.”
Stoelting asked about having four districts and one at-large and no one knew how that would work at this point. Scherer said he was told the easiest would be to go to three districts and two at-large since the two seats were coming up at the next election.
“We need more representation,” Scherer said. “People are precluded either by where they live or because they don’t want to run against their representative.”
Siegel again argued that all of their seats were at-large but included representatives in each neighborhood.
Scherer responded, “I’m worried about the future and long-term. We don’t have enough representation. The average age on this board is retired. I don’t think that’s the best for a municipality long-term to clamp down so only a certain number of people can do it. We didn’t change the time of our meetings to make it more accommodating but to not open it up for more people to run doesn’t make sense to me.”
Siegel said, “That’s the way our democratic system works. You live in districts and our representatives and senators can’t run in someone else’s district.”
Stoelting said he could see it both ways, knowing they are sometimes begging people to run for office, especially in district three. Scherer re-opened the motion to move to a three district, two at-large council and it passed three-two with Siegel and Musser voting against it.
