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Is Zoning a separate department?

jar546

jar546

CBO
Joined
Oct 16, 2009
Messages
12,786
Location
Not where I really want to be
I know that in some small towns, the building official wears the zoning officer hat. I am not talking about a town planner, I am talking about zoning.

Do you have to make the call on zoning issues or is that a separate department?
 
We are the Building Inspection Division under the Community Development Department. Planning (Zoning) is another Division under the Department.

Building has no enforcement of Zoning matters.
 
VillageInspector said:
In our community building/planning/zoning is all one basic department and I oversee all three
Click to expand...

Same here. And I also get the lake, and code enforcement......

I think it's a mistake for zoning/planning/building to be separate. Adds unnecessary time to applications for no benefit to the municipality. It's not that hard to read a zoning map and look at a setback chart and a list of permitted uses.
 
In Fl I was the building and zoning official for the county I worked for. Planning was a separate department. Today I see it is Planning and zoning together, building is separate.
Here we are planning, zoning and building in one department.
 
Primarily, its me the plans examiner. But issuing tenant and use form is the building official/building commissioner. Back to zoning though, if a new commercial building on a property, its me again.
 
I have a local inspector that does the residential plan reviews and inspections for the past year and a great administrative assistant that answers the easy questions.

Central Massachusetts rural area 1.5 hours to Boston, Springfield Ma, Hartford Ct, Providence RI 1 to t1.25 away. 44 square miles 14,000 residences 5000 parcels mostly residential, however, the commercial side has picked up a bit. Electrical, plumbing, and gas are handled by trade inspectors. our zoning is not as difficult as the west coast, residential lot is 60K with 175 feet of frontage
 
Small town and I handle it all. We tried having a ZEO but it became too cumbersome. Much simpler this way, only one person the applicant needs to talk to.
 
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