Lee County Board chairman: Silent denial of code variance request stems from building without a permit

DIXON — In a rare turn of events, all Lee County Board members remained silent after being asked to make a motion on an agenda item, essentially denying its approval at the board’s Feb. 20 meeting, board Chairman Bob Olsen says.

“It was a very loud statement,” Olsen said in an interview with Shaw Local. “It’s a first” and something he believes has never happened in his decade of serving on the board.

What was less rare, however, was their decision to deny the agenda item up for consideration. The zoning petition, filed by Jeffery Lewis of Dixon Township, asked for a variance to a Lee County ordinance that says structures built on properties zoned as Single Family Residential, R-2, must be at least 7 feet away from the side and rear property lines.

“It is common for counties to not approve variations, except in very rare circumstances,” Lee County Planning and Zoning Administrator Alice Henkel said in an interview with Shaw Local.

Olsen said he could tell the board wanted to vote it down, “but it needed to be put on the floor.”

Entertaining the motion allows the board to discuss the details of the agenda item in a public meeting before voting whether to approve it. By failing to make the motion, no discussion ensued, the petition died and the board continued with its agenda.

Lewis filed the petition to allow him to build a structure protecting certain personal assets like a boat and trailer outside of those setback requirements. Previously it was brought to the Lee County Zoning Board of Appeals at its Feb. 6 meeting, where an hour-long public hearing took place.

At that meeting, Lewis said, he approached his neighbor in April 2024 to ask about building a 12-foot concrete pad adjacent to his garage because the pad would run close to his neighbor’s property line. At the time, his neighbor didn’t have a problem with it, Lewis said.

From there, Lewis had Dempsey & Sons Construction, a general contractor in Dixon, build the pad. Two days after its completion, a tree on his neighbor’s lot fell down, “destroying” Lewis' $127,000 boat, he said.

Lewis said that unkempt vegetation on his neighbor’s property also damaged two of his trucks, resulting in “almost $20,000 personal losses to property.”

His neighbor did not agree to Lewis asking to build his requested protective structure, which led Lewis to file a petition with the county, he said.

“All I’m asking to do is build something so I can keep from having my property destroyed,” Lewis said.

Under the Lee County Code of Ordinances, Henkel said, Lewis had a reason to apply for the variance because a portion of his property is located in a floodway, which is difficult to build on, “but then it’s up to the board to determine whether he meets a hardship.”

Title 10, chapter 10, article B of the county code, allows the county to grant a variation to the code “by reason of exceptional topographical conditions,” the article says.

When voting, the ZBA agreed, 4-0, that “there are exceptional topographical conditions,” but said that Lewis should have been aware of that before purchasing the property, according to the resolution presented to the board Feb. 20.

The code further requires that a variance only be granted “when the strict application of any provisions of this title would result in peculiar and exceptional practical difficulties or particular hardship upon the owner of such property,” according to title 10, chapter 10, article B of the Lee County Code.

Title 10, chapter 10, article B of the Lee County Code further states a code variance is warranted “when the strict application of any provisions of this title would result in peculiar and exceptional practical difficulties or particular hardship upon the owner of such property.”

At the Feb. 6 hearing, Courtney Kennedy, an attorney based in Dixon, made multiple arguments against the petition’s approval on behalf of Lewis' neighbors. Most significantly, she said, “his argument hinges on convenience.”

The ZBA agreed, voting 4-0 that “there are other options available to the petitioner, they are just not convenient,” such as storing his equipment off site, according to the resolution.

When voting on its overall recommendation to the board to either approve or deny the petition, the ZBA landed on a tie vote, 2-2, meaning they don’t recommend either option. Olsen said that vote was one of two reasons the board chose to stay silent Feb. 20.

Board members “always like to take a recommendation from our ZBA” when it comes to zoning requests, Olsen said. “They saw that it didn’t pass. So then they investigated more.”

That led them to their second reason, he said, which was that Lewis constructed the concrete pad in 2024 without obtaining a building permit from the county first and the completed pad ended up encroaching on his neighbor’s property line.

“A permit was not obtained from my office” for that project, Henkel said at the meeting Feb. 6. “We found out about the foundation having been poured after the variation was filed.”

“I did stop to ask for permission [from the neighbor] to pour the pad before anything was done. I just want to make that clear,” Lewis said. “I’m trying to go by the books here. I don’t want to break any laws, and it certainly was never my intent to razz any neighbors.”

Lee County requires a building permit for all projects that meet the definition of development, which is “any manmade change to real estate,” according to title 10, chapter 1, article 4 of the county code.

For some projects, the county may not charge a fee for the permit if, for example, a farmer wanted to move a shed that they’ve previously obtained a permit for to a different property, Henkel told Shaw Local.

Olsen said the board is “trying to encourage everybody in the county to buy permits before they dig.”

“The biggest thing that we can prevent by requiring building permits is property line disputes,” Henkel said.

For all residents looking to build, Olsen said, “please call us before you do anything.”

To find out if a project requires a permit, call 815-288-3643.