Planning & Zoning
October 30th, 2007 by 
Alica
One of the agenda items the Brandon Planning & Zoning Commission will discuss at their meeting Thursday (7 p.m.) is possibly acting as the Board of Adjustment. What do you think of that?
Right now, the P&Z’s job is to hear and research requests for special exceptions, variances, conditional use permits and the like. Then the P&Z votes to recommend, to the City Council, a “do pass” or a “do not pass.” The Council then makes the decision on the request.
If the P&Z acted as the Board of Adjustment, they would make the final decision on requests.
According to City Administrator Dennis Olson, Southeast Council of Governments proposed that the city look into making this change. And according to P&Z’s agenda, Toby Brown from SECOG is going to be at the meeting Thursday. It will be interesting to hear what SECOG thinks would be the advantage to the city if it made this change.
What advantages can you think of? What disadvantages?
The meetings of the Brandon Planning & Zoning Commission are open to the public.
Posted in Uncategorized | 
October 31st, 2007 at 7:43 pm
The main difference is the Council members are elected and the planning and zoning members are appointed by the mayor and approved by the council. In the perfect world, it makes sense to me to leave the final power with the elected officials. The council should follow the recommendation of the planning and zoning board 99% of the time. The planning and zoning board are the ‘experts’ and have the knowledge. The council should only be overriding the boards recommendation if they have solid reasons for doing so, not just because they did not like the recommendation. I think we would be changing the laws just to stop this council, which is not the right reason to change the law (they would have to vote to change it anyway). It will be interesting to hear SECOG’s reasoning.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:55 am
If what you say is true about changing the law to stop this particular council, then perhaps it’s time for a new council.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:07 am
After thinking about this a minute….this council has a history of overriding boards in general, why? They did it with the board they appointed for the ambulance issue too. The one with Dr. Vaneys, PA Bonnie Peterson and RN Mary Brooks. Our council must have recently all gone to medical school to think they know more than that committee. Except for Mostek, he voted NO. There was also basically the same committee a couple of years back to study changing the ordinance itself. I can remember Dr. Chester being on that one. They had that information too and ignored it.
November 1st, 2007 at 11:03 am
I think I have to agree with you kent. I too have noticed all the overides, what is the purpose of the board if the council just decides them self what should happen anyways.
November 4th, 2007 at 12:28 am
I would be curious to see how other cities and towns handle P & Z issues. What do Sioux Falls, Omaha, Hartford, etc. do?
November 4th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Here are some of towns with the closet populations. It seems about split down the middle. I did notice when looking through the various sites that many of the seats are for 3 yr terms vs. our 4. Also they tend to have more boards or committees in general than we do. Such as library, community development, parks, etc.
Brookings- Board of adjustment
Huron- P & Z (not real clear on website)
Vermillion= P & Z
Madison- Board of adjustment
Pierre- Board of adjustment
With that said, our council will never vote to switch to a board of adjustment, they won’t give up the power. Just ask Mr. Buck. IMO
November 4th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
I find myself agreeing with Harry Buck on this. It is a lot of power to give to a group of people who are not elected (maybe we can make them elected vs appointed). At least with the council making the final decision, they have to take responsibility for what they decide - good or bad. With a board appointed by them, they could say it wasn’t their fault. The only reason I heard for giving the planning and zoning final say was to avoid law suits, and I don’t think we get many of those.
November 5th, 2007 at 7:24 am
What is the difference if they’re elected or appointed? The elected person is doing the appointing anyway. You elect a person to make decisions and that would really make them think twice about who they’re appointing wouldn’t it?? It would make both boards very accountable for their actions I believe.
Where did you hear the reason about lawsuits? Lawsuits aren’t any part of it. The reason given was that we are wasting time taking the same proposals to both councils, it’s redundant and time consuming. It used to be that the council 99% of the time accepted the P&Z’s recommendation. That doesn’t happen anymore, they are often overridden.
I think it would be a good idea, due to the fact the the balance of power in Brandon would be spread out. Whenever one party is given too much, things can run amock. I think if towns like Madison can do it that way, we sure can.
Again, it will never happen here because our council will have to approve it.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I may have misread the article on the website. It said:
Brown said the city might be able to make a stronger stand in an appeal if the change were made. Now, the city’s case in an appeal might be weaker if the city council has voted against the commission’s recommendation. “We want to get consistency with these decisions,” Brown said.
I was assuming that was a lawsuit seeking to overturn the council’s decision. My argument against having an appointed person having the power would be if some group like the current council appointed the board, their influence would be felt long after they were gone. This way the council has to take responsibility for the decisions, which is the way I think it should be. If the board were elected, the people could remove them from office if they thought they were too unfair in their voting. I guess I’m saying either the board should be elected or the council should continue to act as the Board of Adjustment.