The last time the Equestrian Commission met was on Friday, August 1, 2014 in special session. The purpose of that meeting was to review and comment on two of four commercial horse boarding text amendment proposals to modify our Village code.
The primary focus of that evening was the proposal submitted by the owner of Oakwood Farms, LLC, Barry LeCompte, and another submitted by the Riding Club of Barrington Hills.
The ePacket agenda for tonight’s meeting includes minutes for approval from that August 2014 meeting. These minutes reveal a number of text change and deletion recommendations from the original proposed ordinance for the Zoning Board of Appeals to consider, and, in fact, stated, “To clarify, the redline version below is what we recommend the Village adopt.”
The most important deletion recommended to the Oakwood proposal was striking the effective retroactivity of the proposed code to June 26, 2006, which coincided with the Village Board at that time putting all horse boarding operations, regardless of scale, under the Home Occupation Ordinance.
We find no record of the Equestrian Commission’s recommendation to the Zoning Board (or to the Board of Trustees) in any meeting agendas or packets. Nor is there any mention of them in published audio recordings, so we must ask what happened to this commission’s considered and unanimously approved change recommendations? Why have they not seen sunshine until now, over a year later?
Furthermore, why didn’t certain members of the Equestrian Commission at that time who were present during subsequent Zoning Board public meetings speak up when their recommendations to the ZBA were not recognized and considered? Some may consider this a rhetorical question, but it nonetheless needs to be answered.
The ePacket agenda for tonight’s commission meeting can be viewed and downloaded here.