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51 <br />Approved 2/4/15 <br />216 <br />Laura Nicholson: I brought it up in a previous meeting and the consensus was it is easier to fix it this way. Judging <br />217 <br />by the push back I think there are things going on the new members don’t always get. <br />218 <br />219 <br />Lydia Wegman: I am stating for the record my main problem is having the Planning Board offer its view before the <br />220 <br />public hearing is problematic. The Planning Board will never be sufficiently informed to offer a well-considered view <br />221 <br />without having heard the presentations at the BOCC meetings. <br />222 <br />223 <br />Pete Hallenbeck: I understand, we are all wrestling with this problem. At least this mechanism has a way where the <br />224 <br />Commissioners can identify that this one is going to take a while, etc. <br />225 <br />226 <br />Perdita Holtz: In this process it would also allow the lay person to actually speak to the Planning Board, in a lot of <br />227 <br />communities if you are not an expert at the quasi-judicial hearing, you don’t get to speak. If Orange County were <br />228 <br />ever to perhaps be sued over that, we might adopt that type of attitude about it too. This process would allow the lay <br />229 <br />person to come to the Planning Board and speak their concerns and why. <br />230 <br />231 <br />Lydia Wegman: You’re right Perdita but I’ll just note that because of the public hearing, the layperson’s testimony is <br />232 <br />irrelevant. It would have to bemade very clear to the lay person that while they might speak at the Planning Board <br />233 <br />that because it is quasi-judicial, by the time it’s before the Board of County Commissioners, only expert witnesses <br />234 <br />can give testimony. <br />235 <br />236 <br />Pete Hallenbeck: Again, with the solar project as a reference, if there were interaction with the Planning Board while <br />237 <br />the developers were here there are a lot of questions, answers, interchanges that just can’t happen at a quasi-judicial <br />238 <br />setting and the resident have an opportunity to get better organized so that when you went quasi-judicial and you <br />239 <br />have to swear in you have experts and it’s much more focused. <br />240 <br />241 <br />Lydia Wegman: The three most critical elements in that was the staff could not make a recommendation. <br />242 <br />243 <br />Craig Benedict: Nor the Planning Board. <br />244 <br />245 <br />Lydia Wegman: Nor the Planning Board, they are the most critical ones and they are the only ones in fact which the <br />246 <br />case if it ever went to court would be considered. The key one was ‘the use will maintain or enhance the value of <br />247 <br />contiguous property’. In the case of the solar application, there was an appraisal offered by the solar companyand I <br />248 <br />bet that appraiser, even if he showed up, would have come and said whatever he was going to say to the Planning <br />249 <br />Board and at the public hearing they have a new appraisal and a new appraiser which no one had seen before. And <br />250 <br />there would be nothing that could have been done. <br />251 <br />252 <br />Pete Hallenbeck: There’s another example, they showed this picture of these panels that were further away than <br />253 <br />what was planned with trees there and claimed that was equivalent and so to have that opportunity to do that in <br />254 <br />advance… <br />255 <br />256 <br />Lydia Wegman: The advance doesn’t necessarily stop the applicant from showing up with new information that is <br />257 <br />crucial to the decision. <br />258 <br />259 <br />Pete Hallenbeck: I think it is a great way to think through the ramifications of the process because we have an <br />260 <br />example to look at. Those are the discussion you can have when you’re not constrained by the quasi-judicial <br />261 <br />process and the benefit there if we had this discussion is the residents would have an opportunity to see and get <br />262 <br />feedback from the Planning Board and staff and all of that would help them to make a better presentation. <br />263 <br />264 <br />Lydia Wegman: It is disingenuous to the community to pretend that what the Planning Board and staff can offer an <br />265 <br />opinion on the 3 most crucial elements. I think that is a flaw in the process. <br />266 <br />267 <br />Perdita Holtz: That’s under state law, it’s not something we can change. In some communities the Planning Board <br />268 <br />doesn’thear the quasi-judicial matters at all. <br />269 <br />5 <br /> <br />