The Carbon County planning commission met Tuesday to discuss several zoning, subdividing and coding changes.
The first item, a proposal for subdivision, met public criticism. One commenting member of the public said she had concerns about the subdivision affecting her property, but the planning commission wouldn’t hear any public comment on the issue since the subdivision is in the “concept” stage of discussion. The project under discussion was a one-lot approval in a strip of land adjacent to Carbonville Road. Attendees expressed their frustrations for the commission’s refusal to hear public comment. One member of the commission responded by saying “this is a public meeting, not a public hearing, if you want to, you can ask the chair to allow comments.” The attendees did not comment further.
Other items of business went smoothly. The last item of business, however, did not.
The planning commission’s last item of business concerned the Development Code of Carbon County. After reviewing the proposed changes, the meeting was open to public comment. One member of the public, who had only received the code changes one hour before, spoke up. She pointed out several flaws in the code that needed to be revised before sending the code for approval to the Carbon County Commission. The response to these concerns was “well this is just a cut-and-paste copy, I’ll have the final copy done soon.” The commenter recommended that the commission wait for the final copy to be finished before approval. This request was respected. The planning commission will meet in a special meeting May 13 at 4:30 p.m. in the new administration building to finish their discussion of the code changes.
The commission further discussed the code changes by saying that they just want things to run quickly and smoothly, giving an example of a business that had chosen not to come to this area because of the slow process of obtaining necessary permits.