Itasca trustees still can't agree on new garage law

The Itasca village board again tabled updating the garage code due to a split board.

Board members for the second time discussed ways to tweak the village's garage code in order to ensure consistency of structures throughout the community.

Trustees Tuesday evaluated the plan commission's unanimous recommendation to limit residential garage doors to 9 feet tall and prohibit roll-up garage doors.

While Trustees Ron Putzell, Ellen Leahy and Mike Latoria agreed with the plan commission's recommendation, Trustee Jeff Pruyn was against restrictions and Trustee Jeff Aiani wanted more restrictions.

Trustee Tom Reynolds agreed with Putzell, Leahy and Latoria.

The recent discussions have been triggered by a resident who built a garage that met the village's codes, but in some trustees' opinions looked like a truck garage.

"We've never had any kind of restriction on garage doors," Putzell said. "The plan commission wanted to limit it to 9 to 10 feet because anything larger is closer to a barn than a garage."

Leahy agreed.

"You've got to have some sort of limitations," she said.

Pruyn said he feels the board's punishing residents with RVs if everyone decides to go forth with the restrictions and plan commission's recommendations.

"We never had this problem until we forced people to put their RVs in their garages," he said.

Aiani said he doesn't want to change the ordinance because of a single incident. However, he said he feels the code definitely needs to be looked into. He said perhaps an architectural review committee could evaluate the plan commission's suggestions and put a all-encompassing code together.

"I understand the intention to limit industrial types of appearances in residential neighborhoods," he said. "But I would like to see it be more restricted."

Last week trustees Jeff Pruyn, Mike Latoria and Jeff Aiani disagreed with prohibiting some small roll-up door garages and encouraged the board to continue discussions before deciding one way or another.

Officials anticipate a front porch code also could be looked into in the near future because of similar issues.