North Cook News

The Village of Roselle is considering streamlining operations by merging the planning and zoning commission with the zoning board of appeals.

“I think the zoning board of appeals is kind of the black sheep of this one. Just because it’s had the most number of consistent vacancies, so therefore I have more trouble ensuring a quorum for a meeting every month because people are not meeting as often and I need a minimum number of people,” Community Development Manager Caron Bricks said at the Nov. 28 meeting, the video of which is on YouTube. “So I have had to continue public hearings because there weren’t enough people to attend a meeting and that impacts a resident’s ability to hire a contractor or get bids out for the work they want to do.” 

While many municipalities keep those two functions as separate entities, Roselle is in a different situation in that its zoning board of appeals is quasi-judicial. That means If residents come to get code variations approved, the zoning board of appeals can give final approval without bringing the issue to the village board.

The schedule for when the zoning board of appeals meets is very sporadic. Some years they meet as many as 10 times while other years it has as few as three meetings throughout the year. The planning and zoning commission meets more regularly. The schedule of regular meetings has been shown to aid in information retention, flow of meetings, and increased rapport between committee members.

The recommendation is to combine the two committees into one. It would be a seven-person board with a chairperson. 

The village board would also remove the quasi-judicial aspect of the board, thus requiring that all cases would have to come before the village board for final approval. 

To further streamline the process, the village will be amending some of the codes around fence-height variations. Fence-height variances are the most common issue brought to the zoning board. This would limit the number of cases the combined panel would have to deal with.