Sep 23, 2005 By Jennifer Harr 3 min read

The Fayette County Commissioners adopted a new fee schedule for the new countywide zoning, subdivision and land development ordinance, and approved a payment to finalize the document. The new fees will take effect Oct. 1, and include increases in the cost of a hearing before the zoning hearing board. Application fees for business and industrial uses will go from $600 to $700 and fees for residential, conservation and agricultural uses will rise from $50 to $400 per application under the adjusted fees.

Tammy Shell, director of the county’s Planning, Zoning and Community Development office, previously said the higher fees should stop the county from having to subsidize zoning hearing costs using tax dollars.

Commissioner Joseph Hardy made the motion, and Chairwoman Angela Zimmerlink seconded adopting the fee schedule.

Before the final vote, Zimmerlink asked Shell if there was any reason to hold off on adopting the fee schedule before the text of the new zoning ordinance. Shell said there was not.

Commissioner Vincent A. Vicites said he would rather adopt both together, but ultimately voted in favor of adopting the updated fees.

The commissioners also unanimously approved payment of $4,845 to EPD consultants to revise and finalize the new zoning ordinance.

The money will come from the unappropriated funds line item in the budget. Zimmerlink said $150,000 was put into that line item, and about $130,000 of that has been spent.

Unexpected legal bills, money for a grant and other miscellaneous expenditures already have been subtracted from the total, Zimmerlink said.

Other unexpected bills also will have to come out of the unappropriated funds, she said, including $3,000 in postage overages from the county’s magisterial district judge offices.

Vicites said he thought grant funding would cover the entire project, but the additional work needed on the text portion was unanticipated.

“We need to finalize this so we can adopt it and move forward,” he said.

Zimmerlink said the money to finish the ordinance was not budgeted because the commissioners did not foresee the many changes that were needed. Shell said those changes resulted from public meetings about the proposed changes.

A large part of the changes were done to the zoning map, and not the text, Shell said.

At the request of the commissioners, Shell said she would talk with the contractor working on the new ordinance text and ask that it be completed by next month’s commissioner’s meeting.

Work on the ordinance began nearly three years ago. The new ordinance will have many more permitted uses than the current ordinance and will eliminate the need for some of the zoning hearings that must now occur. A total of 32 out of the county’s 42 municipalities will utilize the ordinance. The other 10 handle their own planning and zoning.

In other news, the commissioners officially hired Greg Robertson as the new director of veteran’s affairs at a yearly salary of $26,812.50. Robertson replaces Frank Staszko, who resigned from the post last year.

Ken White, a member of Rolling Thunder Chapter 5, thanked the commissioners for allowing him to serve on the committee that chose Staszko and Robertson as county veteran’s affairs directors.

But, White said, it was the county’s treatment of Staszko that led him to quit. White said Staszko lacked basic supplies or staffing, and his requests for help went ignored.

“He quit out of pure frustration,” White said.

County Manager Warren Hughes said earlier that was not true.

“At no time did that office go without supplies to conduct their business,” Hughes said.