Planning Commission to Be Boosted Back to Original Size

Two years after a fight to reduce the number of planning commissioners to five, City Council members are set to boost the panel back to where it was.

Councilman Jerry Sigler said he is proposing to increase the commission to its original seven members because the smaller group has not worked as well.

“The Planning Commission is extremely important,” Sigler told his colleagues at a recent study session. “Their decisions are very important to the city, to developers, to everybody. I think it’s better to have seven.”

Council members were set to interview eight or nine candidates last week to fill a commission vacancy, and Sigler suggested they look for three people from that pool to staff a larger panel.

Administrators said the increase would make little difference to their workload and would not add much cost to the city’s tight budget.

All five council members agreed and set a tentative date of March 3 to vote on the issue.

Councilman Jack W. Mauller, who left the panel in 1994 when the commission was reduced, readily endorsed the plan.

The smaller commission has twice had to cancel meetings because it did not have a quorum, said Mauller, who was reinstated to the commission in 1995 and won his council seat in 1996.

A larger commission allows for more points of view, he said. “You get a better consensus across the board and a better representation of community.”