Panel reviews waiver, will decide Dec. 4

The planning commission looked at a waiver for utility and drainage easements on a property in the city’s planning area on Commonwealth Road during its work session Tuesday, Nov. 21.

The planning commission has looked at this waiver before and the applicant, Richard Utecht, was able to participate via video call.

Utecht explained that he needed an opportunity to plead his case in person. The waiver, he explained, was for a lot split; and, without that waiver, he had no interest in splitting the lot.

“Just to revisit this whole thing,” he said, “the only reason we’re asking for the lot split is for estate planning.”

The plan, he said, is for smallscale farming — including orchards and chicken farming. And, while they don’t present an immediate problem, he’s concerned that easements could reduce his usable land and cause problems for his farm in the future.

The trees currently occupying some boundaries, he said, are to be used as a visual and wind boundary and he does not want to risk losing them. Moreover, he said, the utility companies may elect to apply herbicides in those easements which could reach his farm and cause significant harm.

“This is about planning … my plan is to protect my trees,” he said. “I’m not being cantankerous about this just for no reason.”

Chris Suneson, director of the Community Development

Services Department, said the staff was recommending denial of the request.

City staff did not believe, he said, that Utecht could not do what he wants to with the property. A different layout, he said, might make this possible without touching the easements.

It’s important, Suneson said, to preserve those easements for an uncertain future.

“We work with the best information that we have available to us at the time,” he said. “We never know what may happen with development over time.”

The commission’s vice chair, Doug Farner, echoed

Suneson’s concern.

“We, as a group, can’t foresee what’s going to happen 25 years from now,” he said. “And once those easements are gone, they’re gone, and that’s my concern … If we waive those utility easements we can’t get them back.”

The commission also looked at potential revisions to the zoning code to create provisions for medical marijuana, which is becoming legal in Arkansas.

Suneson said this revision would allow medical marijuana dispensaries and cultivation facilities under certain use types in Bella Vista. Dispensaries, he said, would be regulated much like pharmacies, with the exception

that, as per state law, they would not be placed within 1,500 feet of schools or churches.

Chairman Daniel Ellis said he doesn’t expect to see anything in Bella Vista, but it’s good to have a provision in place.

“There are very limited licenses for cultivation … The dispensaries are similarly limited,” he said. “The likelihood of something happening up here, I think it’s fairly low.”

The commission also considered a large-scale development on Sunset Drive.

These items will be discussed and a decision reached at the commission’s regular meeting on Dec. 4.