Council to consider reducing planning commission to five

By Nathan R. Huff

In its latest effort to streamline the planning process, the Town Council delayed making any Planning Commission appointments on May 1. Instead it moved to discuss the idea of reducing the commission from seven to five members.

Despite the presence of two applicants vying for Sandy Decker's former seat, council members said it was an opportune time to consider reducing the number of commissioners in an effort to shorten the brutally long meetings that have become a Planning Commission tradition.

The idea will be debated at a May 22 joint meeting of the council and commission. A number of meeting-shortening ideas have been discussed, including adding more meetings or creating an architectural review process.

"My primary reason was to evoke thought on how to make things more reasonable," Councilman Randy Attaway, who suggested the idea at the meeting, later said. "I think the planning commissioners are working very hard and very diligently, but when you go to 1 a.m. you're less apt to make good decisions."

Mayor Steve Blanton echoed Attaway saying he would like to see more commissioner input before making a decision, but something has to be done. "What's truly driving this is the backlog of projects," Blanton said. "Sometimes justice delayed is justice denied."

Councilman Joe Pirzynski said he also wanted to discuss the matter, adding that the timing was right to do so. "What we have are two candidates brand new to the system," Pirzynski said, referring to applicants Scott Prawat and Pamela Laurence, "who, in my appraisal, are requesting to be appointed to the town's most significant advisory body."

Most council members also felt confident that a five-member body could be just as effective as the current seven-member commission. Blanton said he remembers the commission when it had nine members. "It was absolutely unwieldy," he said. "We want to have a diverse spectrum of review, but not so many that each commissioner feels the need to speak on everything."

Pirzynski admitted he liked the diversity a seven-member committee offered, but he stressed that there was no such thing as a magic number. "If you have five really good people you might be able to get some level of dialogue without as many complications," he said.

However, several planning commissioners said they thought that reducing the number of commissioners would not have as dramatic an impact as the council might think. Commission chairwoman Laura Nachison said while meetings may be shortened slightly, not only would someone have to be removed from the commission, the heart of the problem--in her mind--would not be addressed.

"Focusing on the length of the Planning Commission meetings is an attempt to treat the symptoms, not the cause," Nachison said. "Personally, I've felt for a long time the Planning Commission is too involved in small architectural details."

Nachison explained that what she would like to see is an architectural review committee. This would free the Planning Commission to deal with zoning recommendations, lot split and other primary land use issues. A large portion of every commission meeting is spent on small issues of style and design for each projects.

Nachison's idea was one of several brought up at an April 3 council meeting discussion on the same subject of ending all-night commission meetings. A town architect, more meetings and an architectural review committee or commission have all been discussed as possible remedies for the substantial backlog of projects in the planning process.

Council members Blanton and Jan Hutchins have been cool to the idea of a committee, fearful of creating a "star chamber of architects" who would impose their architectural vision on all applicants.

Suzanne Müller, the newest planning commissioner, is also against separating the issues of architectural review and land use. Müller said she believes the long meetings are more a result of the booming economy and subsequent flood of building projects.

"Maybe we need to do some additional meetings on a temporary basis," she said, "but I don't know if we need to restructure the whole system."

Müller added that reducing the number of commissioners may make it difficult to form a quorum on certain nights, and at the last meeting, when only four commissioners were present, the agenda still lasted until midnight.

But council members are adamant that something must be done. "We've seen so many late meetings lately, and we've discussed it," Attaway said, "and the Planning Commission has not been able to address these issues."

Commissioners Paul Bruno, Lee Quintana, Jim Lyon and Leonard Pacheco were unavailable for comment.

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