Shawano County Planning Director Tim Reed will have to look somewhere besides committee meetings to cut costs.
The Planning, Zoning and Development Committee informed Reed on Wednesday that his proposal to reduce its meetings from 18 per year to 13 was not an acceptable way to balance his budget. The committee also balked at Reed’s recommendation that the Board of Adjustment meetings be reduced from 12 per year to nine.
Currently, the committee has one regular meeting per month, one meeting for preparing and approving departmental budgets, and the remaining five for site inspections for conditional use permit applications and zone change requests. Reed suggested combining the site inspections with the regular meeting each month, eliminating five meetings and the per diems that would have to paid to committee members, saving more than $1,100 in the Planning Department’s budget.
Reed pointed out that the county does not usually get any requests for adjustments in November, December and January because of winter, so three Board of Adjustment meetings could easily be eliminated.
Reed said he anticipate having about $30,000 in his 1-percent carryover fund in 2014, so if additional meetings are warranted, per diem payments could come from there. Any request for carryover funds would have to be approved by the committee.
Supervisor Ken Capelle panned Reed’s recommendations, saying it was not feasible to reduce the committee meetings. The site inspections started earlier this year have dramatically improved committee members’ ability to issue a fair decision on permits and zone changes, he said.
“If we leave at 9 o’clock in the morning and get back around 12, I don’t want to sit here another three hours after that (for the meeting),” Capelle said.
Capelle also pointed out that the committee told Reed in August during its budget meeting that cuts would have to come out of his office. Cutting committee expenses was misguided, Capelle said.
Supervisor Marlin Noffke suggested, instead of cutting three meetings, the Board of Adjustment should have additional meetings to do site inspections like the committee does.
“We’ve had a number of questionable calls and unpopular calls that could have been avoided if they’d gone out there and done their homework,” Noffke said.
Reed warned that the Finance Committee could reduce his overall budget even further than it has, and the committee still might have to consider fewer meetings.
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