Washington Votes Forum

What does a city say when a resident arrives at the permitting desk with his request to build a 10 car garage to safely store (and hide from public view) his automobile collection? Suppose the city already had a zoning limitation of no more than three garages. Under this law would the city have to change the law or grant a variance?

Suppose the aggrieved car lover wants to build more garage space than is available on the lot after the front, side, and back yard setbacks (and an existing house) are taken into consideration? Does the city have to either remove setback requirements or grant a variance to build garage space for the car collection?

I think a lot more thought has to go into the section (2) exceptions to allow a city to retain reasonable zoning requirements.

It might be nice to know what the specific problem that this overly broad regulation is trying to address.

Is the allowable size of the collection independent of whether the collector lives on a 5000 square foot lot in Seattle or a 5000 acre lot eastern Washington?

If the collector wished to build a 5 story parking garage to house his collection, is the city required to allow her/him to ignore height restrictions on all other buildings.

Can he ignore height restrictions on hedges if the city demands s/he hide her/his collection and s/he wants to stack his collection on top of one another.

There may be more reasonable restrictions to allow than the few currently listed in the section (2)s.