OCPB minutes 120716 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

Approved 1/4/2017 9 424 Paul Guthrie: How are you defining a quorum? 425 426 Perdita Holtz: The way the County defines a quorum is in majority of seated members. So this Board normally has 427 12 members… 428 429 Paul Guthrie: So no excused absences? 430 431 Perdita Holtz: Well, excused absence doesn’t have anything to do with a quorum. You have to have people in 432 attendance. So it’s the number of people you have to have in attendance… This goes to State laws and rules. You 433 can’t base your quorum requirements on whether somebody is out of town, or in the hospital. Your quorum is the 434 number of seated members, and the majority of the number of seated members. So right now it’s 6. 435 436 Laura Nicholson: I have another question. Part of it was rather than sending certified mail to a smaller amount of 437 people, we’re now sending regular mail to a bigger amount of people. How do you think that that’s working? Is that 438 increasing attendance at information meetings? 439 440 Perdita Holtz: I think that it really doesn’t have to do with if it was regular or certified, I think it depends on what 441 speed proposed and who’s nearby. 442 443 Laura Nicholson: But do you think that being able to notify more people is helping? 444 445 Perdita Holtz: I think it helps public participation, sure. 446 447 Tony Blake: This recent effort trying to align land use with the zoning on these little non-conforming parcels around 448 the County, I think you got a much better turnout there than you would’ve otherwise. 449 450 Perdita Holtz: I will say that we used to get complaints from some people that were receiving certified mail because 451 it comes in your mailbox and it says it’s from Orange County Government and there were people who said, My wife 452 was upset all weekend because the Post Office got it on Friday and we couldn’t go get it until Monday” and they 453 thought it was tax foreclosures and they were upset that we sent those notices certified mail. And there are a lot of 454 people who won’t go to the Post Office to pick it up, and it’ll come back to us. 455 456 Lydia Wegman: I haven’t had that much experience with the prior process, I was relatively new, but this year seems 457 to be working fine for me. I do feel bad missing the meetings but I am grateful that my absence is not going to hold 458 up a BOCC quarterly public hearing if I’m not able to make it. And I agree with Laura, having people come here to 459 talk to us helps us make better decisions and offers us opportunities for fuller discussions because we have a 460 chance to hear what people are concerned about… How does it work for you? 461 462 Perdita Holtz: The actual process is working well. I do think we need to tighten up some of our internal stuff. Like 463 you all and the public doesn’t see and we’ll be working on addressing that. Like legal review time frames and when 464 they occur and such because there was the issue where they didn’t get finished until after it came to the Planning 465 Board so we had to bring it back. There have been a couple blips like that but we’ll get it right. 466 467 Lydia Wegman: So it sounds like it’s working reasonably well from your standpoint? 468 469 Perdita Holtz: Yeah. And I think that being able to approve low controversy items the night of the hearing is a big 470 improvement. 471 472 Laura Nicholson: I just wanted to ask about notification for neighborhood information meetings. I feel like we’ve 473 gotten more notification than before but it still feels kind of scattered. Not all of the time but sometimes. Are we 474 supposed to get notified, or is it just that sometimes we get? 475 476