New Haven Independent: Zoning Board Avoids Public

Zoning Board Avoids Public

by Melissa Bailey | January 2, 2007 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Five board members, five staff and one “agent” reverend gathered in the basement of City Hall one recent morning to take part in what have become the most low-profile, high-impact rounds of “yeas” and “nays” in city government”” an insiders’ club otherwise known as the debating and voting sessions of the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Just two weeks beforehand, fuming neighbors had filled the aisles of the Hall of Records auditorium railing against plans for a new Dunkin’ Donuts and pleading their case for liquor licenses at the monthly BZA meeting. After taking the mic and answering questions from the board, interested parties headed home. They knew the vote wouldn’t be that night. It would be “sometime in the next two weeks or so.”

In December, board members chose a Thursday morning to cast the fatal “yeas” that granted two liquor licenses, approved a new climbing gym and the expansion of Lulu’s coffee shop.

Even though it attracts far more public interest than most city boards, the BZA is apparently the only one that regularly waits to vote until most of the public has little chance of knowing when or where that’s going to happen.

Voting sessions, at which no public testimony is accepted, are held at varying days and times of the week. There’s no pattern, confirmed BZA Chair Eduardo Perez (pictured above), whose term expires in February.

These days, BZA meetings can stretch well over three hours. By the end, weary board members, who must process heaps of testimony and reports for each request for zoning variances in each corner of the city, usually call the meeting to an end without taking a vote, said Perez.

At a Dec. 21 vote, the once-brimming hall was visited by only a handful of staff, one attorney, and the Rev. Boise Kimber, has been taking on “clients” in real estate and zoning projects.

People with pending applications are alerted by telephone when the voting sessions are held.

Other members of the public must essentially resort to the old crystal ball: Meetings are advertised via posters in the city/town clerk’s office and zoning office, but sometimes only 24 hours in advance, according to Karyn Gilvarg, the City Plan director.

That means in order to catch a voting session, one may need to pester the zoning clerk on the phone, or trek to the Hall of Records, at least once per day.

Why does this matter? Voting sessions are the one chance the public gets to hear the debates and arguments behind decisions affecting the city landscape for decades to come. At these hard-to-predict, reportedly scarsely attended sessions, five powerful people sit down and decide the fate of downtown behemoths and temper-flaring neighborhood projects alike. There, they stamp through a collosal condo tower, and mull the latest addition to an East Rock McMansion.

Why are the voting sessions not held in a regular pattern, thus made more open to public viewing?

“We have required referrals from other city commissions, so we cannot vote on those items” at the BZA meetings, responded Perez after the Dec. 21 vote in the all-but-empty hearing room.

Some items require referrals to the City Plan Commission for site plan or inland/wetlands review. They then return to the BZA for a vote. “It’s much more efficient” to take the vote after those reports come back, said Perez. “It saves the city money” not to issue two sequential decisions on an application.

Could the votes be taken at a predictable monthly time, or at a time announced at the BZA meetings? Perez indicated not. Developers’ time concerns sometimes require “quick meetings,” such as the Dec. 21 meeting, where some pressing applications are considered, and others (such as the two Dunkin’ Donuts projects) are not, Perez argued.

Meeting with regularity is difficult under the surmounting heaps of work the volunteers undertake, he added.

“We have handled an incredible volume of applications “” we have tried to be as efficient and as open to the public as possible,” he claimed. During Perez’s tenure, the number of meetings per year has stretched from nine to 10, he said, to accommodate extra flow.

For applicants tiptoeing their way between zoning barbed wire, missing a meeting can be puzzling, at best. When out-of-towner David Onze, for example, issued a first application to build a climbing gym along the harbor, this statement was all that he learned from the vote:

“Your application dated September 12, 2006, heard on October 10, 2006, relative to referenced property, seeking, Special Exception to permit a climbing gym in a Heavy Industrial zone, was considered by the Board of Zoning Appeals at a Voting Session October 31, 2006. The application was considered in accordance with Section 63 of the New Haven Zoning Ordinance. Permission is hereby denied.”

Reading the letter gave Onze no inkling of the reasons for rejection. For those, he had to appeal to the kindness of City Plan staff for a verbal explanation. (The Port Authority lobby against his project had apparently prevailed.)

Gilvarg, the City Plan chief, said she has sometimes missed a voting session herself because it was scheduled only one day in advance and she either didn’t get the call or couldn’t make the date.

She declined to opine whether the meeting process should be made more open when a new BZA chair comes along next year. “The board has a difficult problem because of the volume of applications,” that prevents them from voting matters on the night of the public hearing, when all are gathered in the room, she said.

Is the process open enough for you, dear readers? Weigh in by posting a comment below.

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Comments

Posted by: as | January 2, 2007 12:36 PM

It's a little hard to believe that, in this day and age, times and locations for voting sessions cannot be posted on the web and emailed to anyone who indicates interest in attending the voting session by submitting an email address at the regular monthly BZA meeting.

Posted by: RobN | January 2, 2007 10:45 PM

ALL BZA meetings (hearings and voting sessions should be merged) should be on a regular monthly schedule with a minimum of a month advance notice to the public f variance applications. The applicant should be required to submit with their variance stamped, addressed notifications for all neighbors within a reasonable radius of the applicants property.

Posted by: Cedar Hill Resident | January 3, 2007 10:08 AM

I agree with RobN and AS... First the New Haven Web Site Voted one of the top Web Sites in the Nation. Alot of the city Depts are now useing it to inform the residents of New Haven there is no reason way regular monthly BZA meeting can not be posted. Or at least like Robn said a resonable amount of time notice be given on them. And people that live in and around said property; I though were suppose to be sent written notice of these things. I no were had a few things in my area were we got the letter a day after?? Come on people if I remeber it is WE THE PEOPLE?? If it affects us we should be notifyed at the least a few weeks ahead of time.

Posted by: TJ | January 3, 2007 1:49 PM

The 'good ole' boys' system appears to be alive and well. Someone should remind them (the BZA) that they are 'public servants' not 'developer servants'. Is a large work load enough of a reason to cut the public out of the process? We all have large work loads and impossible deadlines but remember all of our funding comes from the 'public'. Maybe you need to increase the number of 'regularly scheduled' and 'advertised' meetings so that the 'public' can be properly served.

Posted by: Bryan Lightfoot | January 3, 2007 7:19 PM

If the ZBA is truly a "quasi-jusdicial body" then it would appear to me that as long as they are allowing a public hearing for those with competent and substantial evidence to enter that testimony into the record, then why does the public have to be included during the vote? After all, if the Board is truly functioning in the capacity of a "jury" the chairman should not be compelled to to hold a vote in a public forum. Does a jury in a civil or criminal court hold their deliberations in front of the Court? I think not. Same issue here. The public does not need to be involved in every step of the zoning process. I believe that public involvement in these quasi judicial cases should be limited to facts only at the public hearing and nothing more.

Posted by: RobN | January 5, 2007 1:11 PM

Bryan Lightfoot makes a point that "the Board is truly functioning in the capacity of a jury".

This is incorrect. The Board not accting as a jury of randomly selected peers judging the applicant, but rather, they are serving as representatives of the public (surrogates for our elected aldermen), endowed with the public's trust.

Our alderpersons are our elected representatives and are accountable for creating and amending zoning regulations (law). When this Board considers a varience to law, they should recognize this process as a public service which doesn't only serve the applicant, but also the surrounding properties and owners which may be directly or indirectly effected.Its standard practice that the public be notified of and be allowed input on the granting of variences.

Posted by: Cedar Hill Resident | January 5, 2007 1:26 PM

Bryan Lightfoot
Ok I am not educated on these things and I could be wrong or mis spoken but... But how do we know if the BZA is even taking the publics testimony into consideration. Second we as americans have the right to be witness to anything that is going affect us directly or indirectly. If I want to be at the meeting I should have the right to and I should have proper advance notice of the meetings. I want to make sure that the persons voting have my best interest on the table not just there own.

Posted by: Bryan | January 5, 2007 10:50 PM

I disagree with Robn. You unequivocally deny my statement and count it as false or incorrect. Thats the problem with so many planners in our profession: Arrogance. You are missing the point. I am stating that the public should be allowed the opportunity to speak within the guidelines established by state law, whatever those laws may be. However, once their peace has been made the public hearing should be closed so that the evidence can be considered by the governing or appointed body. When an elected body in NC is charged, in ordinance, with making findings, they do in fact morph into an apolitical body considering testimony from the public for the purpose of finding FACT! End of case. Public OPINION SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED! Now ROBN if I may be so unequivocal- You are wrong!

Posted by: Robn | January 7, 2007 9:48 AM

I think that Bryan is mistakenly reading my comment as a flamemail so I would like to clarify (by the way, I'm a concerned citizen, not an urban planner.) I think that we're both in agreement that the public should have reasonable access to public planning meetings so that, in the cases of non-conforming projects which need a variance, the public can become informed about the project and be allowed to submit their own comments to the Board in a public forum. From there our opinions seem to diverge. My point above is that the BZA is appointed, (not elected) to serve the public and there is no reason whatsoever that their deliberations should be held in private (other than to mask conversation which is either politically sensitve or protecting special interests). Asking for transparency in the variance process (which affects the physical enviroment of the pubic in a sometimes dramatic way) is not nitpicky micromanagement. Transparency is the very essence of freedom of information law and ,in the case of zoning or planning commissions, the transparency must be immediate or the opportunity for meaningful public input is nullified becuase the project goes ahead and gets built before any possible uncomfortabel facts can leak out of and FOI inquiry.

New Haven Independent

Zoning Board Avoids Public

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