Members of the Planning and Zoning Commission and Board of Adjustment voted Tuesday to move the time of their weekly meetings back an hour and a half.
The planning bodies, which met at 4 p.m. on their respective meeting days, agreed to move their meetings to 5:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month. The Board of Adjustment formerly met on the fourth Tuesday of the month.
Rescheduling the meetings will also allow members of the two boards to get all of their city business done in one sitting, as the same seven members sit on both the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Adjustment.
But, the biggest reason for moving the meetings was to benefit the public, both applicants and those affected by applications.
"The change in time allows the public to attend Planning Commission and Board of Adjustment meetings more easily," said the city's Senior Planner, Ben Rhoads.
Karl Mounger, Chairman of both planning bodies, said he wanted to make it easier for people who worked until 5 p.m. to attend meetings. Mounger also noted that he had found it difficult to find people to fill seats on the commission who were willing or able to attend meetings twice a month during traditional working hours.
The meeting time changes came during a special joint meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Adjustment.
The Board of Adjustment's agenda contained two variance permit applications, one for a sign and the other for a driveway. The first application was from Cotton Patch Cafe, which requested a variance to allow the restaurant to remove their current "lollipop-style" sign in favor of an internally-lit monument sign.
Monument signs that are internally lit are not allowed under city code, but most businesses along Highway 412 have them, making the variance desirable for consistency reasons, said Senior Planner Ben Rhoads.
Rhoads said he was in the process of changing city code to allow for signs of this style. Other variance permits for internally-lit monument signs were recently approved for Cobb and Bank of the Ozarks, Rhoads said. The code changes will include measures to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court case Reed v. Town of Gilbert, which ruled that ordinances that regulated signs based on their content violated the First Amendment.
The other item on the agenda was related to a project that had a significant development permit request in the Planning and Zoning Commission. The project was for a 9,100-square-foot Dollar General at the 1000 block of Cheri Whitlock Drive. The variance was needed due to the placement of the lot's storm water detention, the western driveway onto Hico Street encroaches into Cheri Whitlock Drive's setback.
Both the variance and the significant development permit were approved. The significant development permit will go to the Board of Directors on April 4.
The remaining item on the Planning and Zoning Commission's agenda was a lot split development permit for a property on the 21,000 block of Highway 16, which is outside of city limits but within the city planning area. The Commission approved the permit with the condition that proof of ownership for the land be submitted to the city.
General News on 03/19/2017