And, while we're at it, some other thoughts about Monday's meeting...

The other item on the agenda was the separation of the Planning and Zoning Board (PZB) and the Historic Resource Preservation Board (HRPB).  Currently, they meet at the same time and are made up of the same board members - with the exception that the two (PZB) alternates are full voting members for the HRPB.  

The current thought is that the two boards can be at competing purposes at times - there might be a certificate of appropriateness request for a demolition of a contributing structure and a special use permit for a new building or other use of the property.  I agree, it's a balancing act at times, but I still stand on the board's record of weighing all matters and handing down a decision that was sensitive to all considerations.  It is also designed this way so that an applicant (and staff) doesn't have to prepare for two separate meetings and can get all the decisions/reviews done at the same time.

If the boards are separated, my concern is the extra burden of a staff that has to get another packet out to another board in another week.  It has always been my opinion, and is still my opinion, that the city is drastically understaffed in the Planning and Zoning Department.  For a city the size of Lake Worth (around 40,000 and 5 square miles), we really need a director and four planning and zoning professionals on staff.  Two would concentrate on intake of applications and review of current zoning matters and two would deal with the Comprehensive Plan, maintenance of the Zoning Code and Historic Preservation/Design issues.  There is no way this is going to happen in this budgetary environment, but that would be the ideal situation.  If that were the case, I would have no problem separating the boards.

The next consideration is getting qualified membership to serve on both boards.  Lake Worth is a state of Florida Certified Local Government - click title for link to listing of CLGs in Florida.  In order to maintain that status, the HRPB has to be represented by certain professions and should be made up of people who live or own property in the areas of the city covered by historic districts.  The trick has always been coming up with membership on the Planning and Zoning Board that represents the geographic and human diversity of Lake Worth - not having most or all members coming from east of Dixie.  Only now does the city have one member that lives west of Dixie Hwy.  The creation of a new board - with the same professional and interest requirements will make this task more difficult.  The make up of the board is so important that the lack of geographic diversity, in my opinion, greatly contributed to the difficulty surrounding the Sunset property decision - as I have said many times before.

This was left for staff to bring back the necessary changes to separate the boards in five months and then a decision will be made based upon staffing/funding.