photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center CEO Patrick Schmitz addresses the Douglas County Commission during their Wednesday, May 11, 2022 meeting. At the meeting, the commission issued a proclamation recognizing May as Mental Health month in Douglas County.

The Douglas County Commission approved a pair of conditional use permits at its meeting Wednesday, both of which might lead to more work from county staff in the future to iron out standards.

One of them — a vacation rental permit — comes with a number of conditions, from how the property owners are to deal with noise disturbances to mandating a building safety inspection on the property. The permit will be valid for five years.

Commissioners had a number of questions about the conditions county planners recommended for this particular permit, and that’s largely because there aren’t any existing conditional use permit criteria for vacation rentals like this one, which is located in Douglas County’s unincorporated area at 1269 North 870 Road, south of Lawrence.

Much of that discussion was a back-and-forth of clarifications between the commission, planners and permit applicants Brian and Ashley Mott, who called into the meeting via Zoom. Ultimately, commissioners agreed it might be worthwhile for county planners to examine a process for establishing vacation rentals in rural areas of the county that doesn’t require property owners to go through a conditional use permit process.

“I do just want to say thank you, Brian and Ashley, for being the first test case of us going through this, and really talking through all of these hypotheticals and what-ifs,” Commissioner Shannon Portillo said. “I do appreciate how the conversation evolved around what will this look like long-term. I also think it sounds like we need overall regulations for how do we deal with vacation rentals in the unincorporated areas in the county. I know that’s coming; we’re just trying to get ahead of it with this particular CUP.”

The other conditional use permit application approved Wednesday was for a home-based business located at 1074 North 100 Road, also in unincorporated Douglas County west of Baldwin City. The permit allows the business owner to house the business’ snow removal equipment in exterior storage on the property, and it will be valid for 10 years.

Commissioner Patrick Kelly said that the county has seen more than just this single request pertaining to storing equipment like trucks on residential property in the unincorporated areas of the county, and he said it might be worthwhile for planners to evaluate what that means for the county’s infrastructure.

“This tears up our roads,” Kelly said. “These township roads were not designed to be commercial traffic roads, and I don’t know what the breaking point is here, but I think it’s something we need to be concerned about.”

In other business, the commission:

* Proclaimed the month of May as Mental Health Month in Douglas County. The commission issued a proclamation noting that Mental Health Month is observed nationally each May to raise awareness and understanding of mental health and illness.