YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS...

I just attended the Planning Commission meeting last night. As part of the audience, what struck me most about the meeting was that part of the atmosphere that Commissioner Al Novacek appeared to try to set.
Listening to him, one might think he is the only one up there trying to help citizens. "What are we here for? We're supposed to be helping people ...I think we shouldn't apply those (longstanding) rules in this case...I'M going to 'advocate' for the citizen here..." or words very close to that.

The end effect of his posturing, in my opinion, was to make the Commission look dysfunctional, to unnecessarily upset the citizen, and to leave hanging a nasty and unjustified question about the rest of the Commission's motivations. NOT helpful!




Yes, we are without clerical assistance right now. There is still the website which holds the Ordinances, application forms, instruction sheets and even a site plan example. It clearly states that all materials must be submitted ten days before the Planning Commission meetings.

For a citizen to come in with one application form not appropriate to his project, to change the project itself right there in front of the Commission, to have lots of missing information on the site plan, and to not avail the entire Commission an ability to view the "new" application isn't really reasonable. Again in my opinion. The citizen meant no ill will and of course wants to starts his projects ASAP--like everyone who comes before the Commission/Board. He was just very unprepared. Had we an experienced clerk in place, he/she would have pointed out all the items which made his application incomplete and would not even have forwarded it to the Planning Commission in the first place in the state it was in. That's a vital part of the clerk's role.

But the rules are there for a reason. The Planning Commission is supposed to check all points of zoning on the application before sending it on to the Board. To circumvent that, as I believe Novacek was proposing, really states that the Board can just do this work for themselves and add to their already looooong meetings. Getting all the ducks in a row for the Board is part of what the Commission does.

I did talk to the citizen before he left the Town Hall and unofficially pointed out to him what information he was still missing and how the form should have been filled out. I reinforced that he should visit the website. He left in a better mood and with greater understanding.

If I were an fellow Commissioner of Mr. Novacek's, I would be offended at his implication that he was the "knight in shining armor" to "rescue" the citizen (from...?). As it was, he gave out wrong information to the applicant when he stated that there are no limits on his projects of this sort. That hole in the Ordinances was closed MONTHS ago.