What is the authority of the DeWitt County Zoning officer?
That was the question raised by the DeWitt County Board last week as part of a proposal to expand the role of the officeholder. Buck Carter offered clarity on the revisions.
DeeDee Rentmeister is the County's Administrator and serves as the Zoning officer currently as the County doesn't have an officer. She advocated for leaving the language alone but Megan Myers says the zoning officer should have more say in an application's completion.
Rentmeister says the zoning officer's job is to accept an application and begin the process of it going to the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Regional Planning Commission before coming to the County Board. She does not believe there needs to be any authority for the zoning officer to decide if an application is complete or incomplete.
Aaron Kammeyer says the costs of having a court reporter hired and paying the ZBA and RPC members all the time of hearings adds up for the County. Board Chair Ferguson wondered how the new language changes the current ordinance.
Carter and David Newberg went back and forth on the wording of the ordinance in defining the role of the administrator.
Carter reminded board members the RPC and ZBA were trying to streamline ordinances. Board members and Rentmeister discussed the language about the wording surrounding a completed application.
State's Attorney Dan Markwell supported Rentmeister's assessment of the role of the zoning officer and believes it is that person's job to take an application to the RPC for review because it is going to have to be reviewed anyways.
The Board again got hung up on the correctness of an application. Kammeyer believes it would be a waste of time to run an application through the full process if an application is not filled out correctly but Newberg pressed Kammeyer about an instance where an application has not been done correctly.
Between Kammeyer, Ferguson, and Myers, the trio debated the proper way to get an application approved and if one person should have the authority to determine if an application is complete.
The vote was 5-5 and failed.
