(A) The Board of Adjustment shall, subject to appropriate conditions and safeguards as specified in this chapter, have the following powers (Neb. RS 19-910):
(1) To hear and decide appeals where it is alleged there is error in any order, requirement, decision or determination made by an administrative official or the Planning Commission based on or made in the enforcement of any zoning regulation or any regulation relating to the location or soundness of structures;
(2) To hear and decide, in accordance with the provisions of any regulation, requests for interpretation of any maps, or for decisions upon other special questions upon which the Board is authorized by any such regulation to pass; and
(3) Where by reason of exceptional narrowness, shallowness, or shape of a specific piece of property at the time of adoption of this chapter, or by reason of exceptional topographic conditions or other extraordinary and exceptional situation or condition of such piece of property, the strict application of any enacted regulation under Neb. RS 19-901, 19-903 to 19-904.01, 19-908 and 19- 910 would result in peculiar and exceptional practical difficulties to, or exceptional and undue hardships upon the owner of such property, to authorize, upon appeal relating to the property, a variance from such strict application so as to relieve such difficulties or hardships, if such relief may be granted without substantial detriment to the public good and without substantially impairing the intent and purpose of this chapter, but no such variance shall be authorized unless the Board finds that:
(a) The strict application of the regulation would produce undue hardship;
(b) Such hardship is not shared generally by other properties in the same zoning district and the same vicinity;
(c) The authorization of such variance will not be of substantial detriment to adjacent property and the character of the district will not be changed by the granting of the variance; and
(d) The granting of such variance is based upon reasons of demonstrable and exceptional hardship as distinguished from variations for purposes of convenience, profit or caprice.
(B) No variance shall be authorized unless the Board finds that the condition or situation of the property concerned or the intended use of the property is not of so general or recurring a nature as to make reasonable and practicable the formulation of a general regulation to be adopted as an amendment to this chapter.
(C) In exercising the above-mentioned powers, such Board may, in conformity with the provisions of said sections, reverse or affirm, wholly or partly, or may modify the order, requirement, decision or determination appealed from, and may make such order, requirement, decision or determination as shall be proper, and to that end shall have all the powers of the officer from whom the appeal is taken. The concurring vote of four members of the Board shall be necessary to reverse any order, requirement, decision or determination of any such administrative official, or to decide in favor of the applicant on any matter upon which it is required to pass under any such regulation or to effect any variation in such regulation.
(Ord. 2009-04, passed 4-23-2009)