Land that the Nashville Town Council recently bought to make into a park will need to get a special exception to be used that way.
Town Attorney James T. Roberts said a request has been made to be on the Sept. 27 agenda of the Brown County Board of Zoning Appeals.
Neighbor Tricia Bock had questioned the council when the purchase was made, saying that a park was not allowed in the land’s current zoning, which is residential. Town council members told her that it was.
Then, two town park public input meetings that had been scheduled for Aug. 16 were canceled, two days before they were to occur.
Council President “Buzz” King said at the Aug. 17 council meeting that a town park is allowed in residential zoning, but the town needs a special exception to do it.
Brown County Planning Director Chris Ritzmann said the BZA will be the only board that will hear this request, and usually, special exceptions are decided on in a single meeting.
The council also had a short discussion about cars parking on this new park land this fall, before the town is able to actually make it into a park. King worried that if the town didn’t put up signs, people would park there because they used to do that when it was privately owned. Council member Arthur Omberg told him he didn’t think that “no trespassing” signs should be put up because it’s public land. King banged the gavel and said he was sorry he brought it up.
King later apologized. He said that from watching tourists in this town for 70 years, he knows that they’ll park anywhere they can, and he worried about people parking there in a way that wouldn’t let other drivers get their cars out, or that would tear up the ground.
