10-29-1984 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ms. Jeanne Mabusth October 11, 1984 Page 5 D. Precedent There has been considerable discussion regarding previous actions by the City Council pertaining to substandard lots, and specifically whether the Fisk variance repre- sents the largest deviation from lot area requirement ever considered by the City. Ths• Council recently asked staff to produce additional information or. this matter for the October 29th meeting and, hopefully, this will allow a clearer understanding of the facts. Regardless of the above, a few comments regarding prece- dertt seem appropriate at this point. The first of these is to note that precedent need not be followed blindly. All decision makers recognize that policies established in the past are sometimes recognized to be in error or that changed conditions have rendered old practices no longer appropriate. wt-en this is appreciated, new policies may be initiated even when they run_ cou.►ter to established ways. Secondly, it appears safe to say that the Council hGs on a number of previous occasion:: considered variance requests for substandard lots. what is uncertain is the degree of clarity with which those previous cases were presented. It may well be that in many of those previous cases, especially if they were uncontested, the signifi- cance of the request was not fully evaluated. This is to be expected with a busy agenda. However, the present case has illuminated the issues starkly ar: has served to make the City aware of the implications of its actions. As a result of that fact, it will be much more difficult for the City to depart from the precedent it sets with the present case than from those variance requests which have preceded it. In addition, the Council must consider to what limit it is willing to allow the precedent argument to take it. In the present case an applicant has requested a variance for two substandard lots which are being considered as a single developable parcel. What if, instead, only a single undeveloped lot was the subject of the request and the lot area was one -eighth of an acre instead of one -quarter? Would the Council feel compelled to grant a variance under those circumstances-? This strongly suggests that there must be some point after which the City must determine that, regardless of the fact that the