CHC 1979-03-06 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Board of Appeals. Especially when you have a. Planning Director that is empowered to make decisions like the Planning Commission. What I am proposing, here, is to relieve some of the ministerial kinds of functions of the commission. That the director be empowered to handle' administration of certain variances. There is a potential , I think thatz-and human beings will be human beings- -for the director under certain occasions to abuse his authority. Perhaps under that situation before going over to the courts, there may be® ®there should be an administrative layer of relief. Someone to put the Planning Director in check saying, I think you kind of went out of line over here. You should have a system where the planning, and again , I 'm also reminded like the Planning Commission, they, too, once in awhile, they are human beingsq as weil!y and they may be, at certain points, subject to abusing their authority. We have one case, right now, before the Planning Board of Appeals appealing a denial of a variance by the Planning Commission. In the beginning, I was thinking well the Planning Board of Appeals, how many times do they meet? They meet about four times a year. They probably handle about thrediior four applications a year. But then again I came to the general conclusion because they meet infrequ- ently, does not necessarily mean that their functions are not needed. It is somewhat analogous to the Board of Ethics you know, they don 't necessarily meet frequently but they are needed. I think that after doing more thinking about it, I think there is a need for this kind of check within the administrative area. CHAIRMAN<,SAKATA: Mr. Fuke, at present now, you don ' t have anything to do as far as on the Board of Appeals, the members that are appointed by the mayor. You don ' t have anything to say as to the appointment of these people? MR. FUKE: No. The mayor appoints; the council confirms the Planning Board of Appeals. The Planning Board of Appeals is assigned to the Planning Department only for administrative purposes. What we do + ?s make arrange- ments for per diem and whatever; make the agenda and all that stuff. When the Board of Appeals go through a hearing and the decision is against an action that I have made then what normally happens is that the corporation counsel represents me and the Planning Board of Appeals is represented by a legal counsel provided by the State Attorney General ' s Office. Just to further eliminate the ;appearance of any kind of conflict. ' CHAIRMAN SAKATA: So then any citizen of the state can be on the board, in other words, as long as, appointed by the mayor. In the county, rather. - 11 -