After "last straw" E.C. leaders resign

All three Electric City planning commissioners present resigned at their monthly meeting Tuesday afternoon, their first meeting following a city council meeting at which their recommendations were rejected or ignored.

Only Merle Kennedy, who didn’t attend Tuesday’s meeting, remains as a member of the board of commissioners. Contacted about an hour after the meeting ended, Kennedy said he hasn’t decided what he will do.

“I was disappointed in the council’s action, but want to give it some time before I make any decision,” Kennedy stated.

The meeting Tuesday was opened, the minutes from the last meeting were approved, and then it was all over as one by one they submitted their resignations. The meeting lasted about five minutes.

It was obvious that commissioners were unhappy with the way the city council handled their recommendations to change the zoning code that had been forwarded for action at the council’s last meeting Feb. 10.

The three all thanked each other for the individual work they had done.

Leaving the commission are longtime member and chair Monty Fields, Carl Russell and Ray Clover.

The commission had tackled and changed the size requirements of accessory buildings, re-shaped fence requirements and made revisions to requirements for home business occupation permits, then moved these to the council for approval.

Instead, the council lifted the square footage size restriction on accessory buildings and and didn’t act on the rest of the commission’s work.

“That was the final straw,” Fields said. The commission had hoped that the council would approve the changes and move them on to a 60-day public comment period. All of the proposed changes had been shared at earlier council meetings, so there were no surprises, and planning commission members expected their recommendations to sail along to the public comment period.

“With Jerry gone, there’s no buffer between the commission and the council,” Fields said, referring to former mayor Jerry Sands, who tendered his resignation two weeks ago, effective the last day of February, 34 months before the end of his term.

While Sands had tried to stay out of the commission activity, and admittedly held himself at arm’s length, commission members felt that he would make sure their work got full attention from the council.

The commission had been under pressure for nearly two years from a few people in regard to the size of accessory buildings and thought that had now been addressed. But it all fell apart when the council lifted the square footage size restrictions on the buildings, then didn’t act on the rest of the commission’s work.

The commission had recommended 1,728 square feet as the maximum size for accessory buildings, a large move up from 850 square feet.

Departing commissioners all thanked city planner Kurt Danison, who was not present, for his work, and Russ Powers, the deputy city clerk who acts as secretary to the group.