City Plan Director Jeremy Skinner talks during the plan commission meeting Monday night, Dec. 9. InkFreeNews photo by Dan Spalding.

WARSAW  An uptick in the number of lakefront homeowners seeking to add accessory buildings has officials in the city plan office wondering if a policy change is needed.

The city’s ordinance does not allow for accessory buildings on the lakeside portion of a home or on the street-side portion of the home. The only alternative is to place the accessory building along the sides of the house, but often, the lots are not wide enough.

That’s leading homeowners to seek a variance from the board of zoning appeals to place the buildings in the front or the back. The BZA has seen about six requests in the past two years and has approved most, if not all, according to Plan Director Jeremy Skinner.

Accessory buildings can include detached garages or storage sheds.

Skinner brought up the topic Monday, Dec. 9, during the city plan commission meeting.

“Whenever we have an ordinance issue where we are seeing multiple cases come before us and it’s not something that’s peculiar or unusual, then it becomes an opportunity for us to look at our ordinance and ask ourselves, what are we doing wrong or is there a better way to handle the situation,” Skinner said.

“We’ve seen enough to know it’s an issue,” he said.

If the BZA routinely begins approving requests to place accessory buildings in these circumstances, it starts to establish a precedent, Skinner said.

Skinner did not provide any suggestions on what might be done.

Three plan commission members offered to get involved in looking into the matter. They are Rick Keeven, Jim Gast and Diane Quance, who serves on the board and is city council president.

If the plan commission proposes changes to the zoning ordinance, those would have to be approved by city council.

The city of Warsaw has residential properties on three lakes – Center, Pike and Winona.

Skinner said there is no immediacy to look at changes, but suggested they look into the issue after the first of the year and eventually prepare to seek public comment.

In another matter, the board approved a request by Zimmer Biomet to reconfigure property north of the old Biomet headquarters near or along CR 250N.

The board granted preliminary and final plat approval to create four lots in the 64-acre tract of land.

No representatives of the company appeared at the meeting. The request had no opposition and was approved unanimously.