Angry Bainbridge Couple Confronts Trustees About School Zoning Issues
Kelly and Jim Smith have lived at 17383 Snyder Road, next door to Kenston Middle School for almost 30 years. But they have had enough of the school district’s latest improvements, which the Smiths say make living in their house almost intolerable.
Kelly and Jim Smith have lived at 17383 Snyder Road, next door to Kenston Middle School for almost 30 years.
But they have had enough of the school district’s latest improvements, which the Smiths say make living in their house almost intolerable.
“We’ve been good neighbors since 1987, when we bought our house,” Kelly told Bainbridge Township Trustees Monday. “But the school has become awful neighbors.”
The last straw — a new sign in front of the school.
“It will shine right in our living room window and that’s not acceptable,” she said. “It’s bad enough that the windmill sounds like a helicopter over our house.”
She told trustees her family endures the almost constant thump-thump-thump of the school district’s giant windmill, which she says sounds like a helicopter hovering over their house.
“We don’t have air conditioning, so we sleep with the windows open,” Kelly said. “The sound goes on all night.”
The couple has also put up with loud lawn mowers at 6 a.m., kicking up rocks that once broke a window as well as school maintenance workers accidentally cutting their electric dog fence.
Then there is a new sidewalk that drains right into their yard, not to mention a series of shiny solar panels installed lately just behind their property, Kelly said.
But the sign will be the worst yet, she said.
The school district has begun work on a large new sign that will be perpendicular to the road and will have moving red lettering for messages, Kelly said later.
She noted the district began the installation before receiving approval from the township’s Board of Zoning Appeals.
Kelly told trustees she and her husband have attended three BZA hearings since September on the sign issue, but the school district either did not show up or they sent a representative who was so unprepared the hearings were continued.
“Usually, if someone doesn’t bother to attend the hearing, the board finds against them, but twice (Kenston Superintendent Robert) Lee didn’t show,” she said Tuesday. “We don’t know why he’s getting special treatment.”
She added, “The BZA will meet again on the 20th, which will be the fourth meeting we’ve had to attend. It shouldn’t have come to this.”
Kelly told trustees the Geauga County Prosecutor’s Office informed them that schools do not need to conform to local zoning.
“So who’s got our backs?” she asked trustees.
“You’ve been told the rules don’t apply to them because of a provision in the law that says that to a government entity that owns property, the zoning rules don’t apply, but that doesn’t mean they don’t apply at all. There has to be some kind of balance,” Trustee Lorrie Sass Benza, who has served in the past as an assistant county prosecutor and has also served as a Bainbridge zoning official said.
“We all have to meet somewhere in the middle,” Benza said. “Sometimes the law is a little muddy or grey.”
Road Department Superintendent Wally Rudyk told trustees he would work with the Smiths to solve the drainage problem.
“I went out there and talked to Mr. Smith, and saw that there is no drainage on the curb of the new sidewalk,” Rudyk said.
Trustee Chris Horn told the couple trustees “will work on that in due course.”
Trustee Jeff Markley said the board has received “a flood of emails” about the sign issue.
“The normal venue would be through the BZA, but you’re coming to us as a last resort,” Markley told the Smiths. “Hopefully at the Dec. 20 meeting there will be a more specific discussion this time. The BZA is the right venue for this.”
Benza asked the Smiths whether they have gone to the Kenston Schools Board of Education over the issue.
Kelly said they had not.
“I highly recommend that as another venue,” Benza said.
Tuesday, Kelly said that she and her husband have decided to hire an attorney to represent them on the sign issue.
“We’re really not trying to be the bad guys here, but someone needs to hold them all accountable,” she said.
