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City Of Okoboji Looking At Reducing Terms Of Planning & Zoning Comm. Members

October 02, 2024 Steve Schwaller

(Okoboji)– The Okoboji City Council is considering a change in term lengths for members of the Planning and Zoning Commission. City Administrator Michael Meyers explains what it was that led up to the possible change…

“Currently we have some vacancies on some of our boards, our Board of Adjustment and then two on our Planning and Zoning Commission. And I think what we find is we just have a hard time recruiting people to these positions just due to the nature of our community and just trying to get volunteers excited about pubic service. One of the things in our community that we have is a five year commitment to be on our Planning and Zoning Commission, it’s a five year term. In some of the conversations that we’re having with our residents, they want to join this board, but they are apprehensive about the five year term. They want to see through the commitment but five years is a little bit too much. And so what we’re looking at doing is changing that term from five years to three years to just try to make it a little more attractive for someone to join that board.”

Meyers says they came up with the three-year term proposal after some research…

“Iowa Code mandates that the Board of Adjustment is five years, so we don’t have any flexibility there, but the Planning and Zoning Commission is on a city-by-city basis. We have the fortunate ability to reach out to many different communities across the state and we’ve polled them and essentially said how long is your term for your Planning and Zoning Commission and it’s all over the map. You see some at three years, some at five years like we are currently, and then even some at seven years, and so we feel very comfortable with proposing to go with three years.”

The city council Tuesday evening scheduled a public hearing on the proposed change for their next regular meeting November 12th.

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