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Lakeway council abolishes Building Commission, reassigns duties and standardizes appointments after Charter changes
Summary
Council approved ordinances removing the City Building Commission from the code, transferring certain discretionary approvals to staff and the Board of Adjustment, and standardizing boards/commissions appointments to match a recently approved Charter amendment; council also renamed the Heritage body to a committee.
The Lakeway City Council on June 16 approved ordinance changes that remove the City Building Commission (CBC) from the municipal code, reassign its duties, and standardize the appointments process for boards and commissions following a voter-approved Charter amendment.
City Manager Grundman and city attorney Caputo presented code amendments that strip CBC references from multiple code chapters and reassign authority where state law and council preference allow. Under the changes, variances and appeals that require a public hearing will be heard by the Board of Adjustment (BOA); waivers will generally be handled administratively by the code official with an appeal path to BOA. The change eliminates the CBC step and consolidates appeals and variances consistent with state practice.
The ordinance updating appointment procedures implements the Charter amendment requiring that councilmembers appoint members to boards and commissions with council confirmation. The ordinance standardizes term lengths and expirations (noting that board terms will be handled uniformly with one-year terms expiring June 30 and with holdover until successors are appointed). The city attorney—s staff memo also clarified that some entities that have been called commissions in code (notably the Heritage body) are committee-level functions; the council approved treating the Heritage body as a committee rather than a commission and instructed staff to reflect that change in ordinance language and the municipal code database.
Public comment included a former CBC chair who urged the council to draw on CBC membership experience as the city reconstitutes the BOA and other panels. Council members asked a handful of technical questions about state requirements for variance hearings and confirmed that the ordinance aligns the code with the Charter and with state law.
The council approved both ordinances (the CBC removal and the appointments update) unanimously.
