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Council directs staff to pursue zoning text amendment to shorten waiting period after ZBA denials
Summary
Council members voted to send a proposal to planning and zoning to consider reducing the mandatory waiting period for applicants denied by the Zoning Board of Adjustment from one year to a shorter interval to help residents who may have presented incomplete cases.
The Town Council on June 23 directed staff to initiate a text amendment to the zoning ordinance to reconsider the waiting period that bars applicants who were denied by the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) from reapplying for a set time.
Council member Dennis Sheridan, who requested the change, said the current one-year waiting period can be unfair to residents who lack professional planning assistance and sometimes appear at meetings unprepared. “If they were denied, and all of a sudden they think of, ‘Why didn’t I say that or why didn’t I do it this way?’ they gotta wait a year, and I think that’s unfair,” Sheridan said. He proposed four months as a preferred alternative.
Staff told council the usual process would send a proposed text amendment to the Planning and Zoning Commission for review and public hearings; the commission would then make a recommendation back to council. Multiple council members supported sending the item to Planning and Zoning. Council member Roland Rowe seconded Sheridan’s motion; the motion passed.
Council and staff emphasized that the referral does not alter ZBA’s authority or past actions — it only asks staff and Planning and Zoning to evaluate and recommend whether the municipal code’s waiting-period language should be changed.
