I'll continue to do what I can to make these meetings. Two members resigned from the commission late last year because of failing health and business commitments. The Planning and Zoning Commission is widely regarded as among the most important citizen committees that offer recommendations to the City Council. The board oversees city growth through, as the name implies, planning and zoning. It has to be managed.
Absences can impede both progress and the process.
Planning staffers spent an estimated 20 hours preparing for last week's meeting, legwork that must be repeated. And along with Roppe's proposed project, a vote on a long-awaited antenna tower ordinance was stalled another month. A special workshop on the tower ordinance was halted last month when one of the four members attending had to depart after about an hour. We have a moratorium on tower construction, and we can't do that forever. We need to be able to respond to applicants and put a mechanism in place to make that happen.