Wilmette trustees want to reduce the absentee rate on the village’s zoning board of appeals, which, according to some village officials, can slow eventual zoning decisions.
Trustees on Sept. 26 unanimously agreed to route the issue to the village board’s land use committee. That group meets Oct. 30, according to Assistant Community Development Director Lisa Roberts.
One theoretical solution is amending village code to lower the number of members needed to issue positive zoning recommendations, Roberts said. A better route might be to find ways to keep attendance closer to the full ZBA complement of seven, according to Village Trustee Dan Sullivan, a former ZBA chairman.
As is the case for all of Wilmette’s boards and commissions, including the village board, ZBA members are unpaid. With the exception of the village board, which is elected, all other boards and commissions are volunteers who are appointed by the village president.
Only one of 14 ZBA meeting between January and August was attended by all seven members, according to meeting minutes. Three had only four members; eight had five commissioners, and two had six members on the dais.
In the 14 meetings this year for which there are minutes, no ZBA member had perfect attendance. Three members attended nine meetings; one attended 10 meetings, two attended 11 meetings, and one attended 12, records show.
Mike Duffy, the ZBA’s current chairman, attended 11 of those meetings. He said he didn’t think members’ absences have caused undue problems for petitioners.
He also said it can be difficult to recruit volunteers for the zoning board because of the amount of time members must spend reviewing cases – six to eight hours at minimum.
“On occasion, (absences) frustrate me, honestly, but I understand people have their lives,” he said, adding that he has spoken in the past to members with numerous absences.
Duffy said having more members available to make decisions is preferable to lowering the voting requirements.
Roberts said that of 51 cases heard by the ZBA this year, nine were tabled after petitioners requested a postponement due to low attendance on the board.
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Roberts said the board has had to cancel meetings due to lack of quorum twice so far this year, and the ZBA has canceled similar numbers of meetings in previous years for the same reason.
Although there is a provision in village code to consider missing three consecutive meetings as a de facto resignation, Roberts said the staff has not raised that possibility. Duffy said forcing someone off the ZBA if they miss three consecutive members still leaves the board without members until a replacement can be found.
“The difficulty in following policy is, OK, we get rid of this person, but you still have meetings without the seventh person,” Duffy said.
Appointing alternate ZBA members, who could attend when regular members can’t, might be one way to ensure better attendance, said Sullivan, who raised the issue at a recent land use meeting.
Roberts said high ZBA absences raise the possibility of zoning cases getting a technical negative recommendation.
The reason: Wilmette’s code requires the ZBA to label any decision with fewer than four positive votes as a recommendation that the village board deny final approval. That means even if a majority of ZBA members at a low-attendance meeting say they favor the case, a 3-1 or 3-2 positive vote still goes to village trustees with an official thumbs-down.
Duffy said that ZBA petitioners can take a negative recommendation to the village board for a positive recommendation.
However, according to village code, if trustees want to overturn the “negative” recommendation they get from the zoning board – in effect, honoring the actual positive vote – they need to muster a super-majority of five trustee votes to do so.
Village President Bob Bielinski said at the meeting that he planned to email the ZBA members to encourage their attendance. He said he understood that volunteer board and commission members are busy, and sometimes can’t attend.
On Sept. 28, he said, “I don’t want the bar to be at 100 percent attendance.
“If people have a short-term issue (in attending) that’s fine, but if they have a consistent difficulty, I want them to talk to me. There’s nothing wrong with stepping down,” he said.
Sullivan doesn’t support lowering vote requirements.
“You want seven voices making these decisions,” he said. “When you have only four people looking at an issue, you do miss the three extra sets of eyes.”
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy