Board of Adjustment Considers Setting Aside The Hillside Ordinance Tomorrow

Tomorrow afternoon, the Oro Valley Board of Adjustment, the town's most powerful board, gets the opportunity to decide to enforce the Oro Valley hillside ordinance or, as they decided in April, to ignore the ordinance, profiting a developer at the expense of homeowners.  This involved Sunridge II, owned by developer/resident Mike Arnold, Kachina Homes.

The present case is item 3 on tomorrows agenda.

Meritage Homes filed a request to dig 4,100 square feet into the hillside on a final lot in the Hohokam Mesa subdivision.  This is located near the Moore Road and Rancho Vistoso intersection.  The lot is almost 60,000 square feet. 27,000 square feet are 25% or greater hillside.  "There are several washes and steep slopes on the site." (Source: Staff Report) In fact, there are two natural washes below the 25% slope areas.

The other Hohokam Mesa lots are not hillside. They have been graded. Some have been developed.  Now Meritage, who purchased the property in 2012, wants to build model home on this one rather unbuildable lot.  Meritage filed their request 2 days after the Town Council overrode a conservation easement to allow the Sunridge II development to proceed.

Essentially, Meritage believes that they should be allowed to do this because it is the special condition of the hillside ordinance that is preventing them to be able to use the land as they did the other Hohokam Mesa properties.

Town Staff agrees with Meritage: "The significant topography [steep slopes} and washes constitute a special circumstance which does not apply to other properties." This conclusion is based on the staff and Meritage's use of term"other properties." It is not the total of what is required by law.  By law, they should be referencing" "...other properties in the district." Aren't they are assuming that the "district" is the other homes in the Hohokam Mesa development?

Is the Hohokam Mesa development a district?  We think not.  What if the term "district" in interpreted to mean "Rancho Vistoso"?  The hillside restriction is part other Rancho Vistoso PAD. The Hohokam Mesa development is part of the Rancho Vistoso PAD. The Hohokam Mesa development is not a separate district for legal determination purposes.

Defining the term "district" to mean this specific development simply means that every development becomes its own zoning determining body.  Every hillside ordinance would be overridden.  Buy a property that has legally gradable land and a hillside. Give that property a name; maybe, Hohoham Mesa 2.  Define that as your "district."  Grade the legally gradable land. Then claim that your property rights are being infringed unfairly because you can not build on the hillside land like you could in the rest of the "district" because you are not allowed to grade a hillside.  

Tomorrow night, the Oro Valley Board of Adjustment gets a "do-over."  If they define the district to be the Rancho Vistoso PAD, which it is; then they must, by law, not grant this variance since the hillside ordinance applies equally to all such like properties, all such slopes in the Rancho Vistoso PAD.  If, on the other had, they agree with town staff, then the hillside will be "blown away."
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