Mr. Answer Person: "Should Winneshiek County ask for some money back from the firm doing the rewriting of county zoning ordinances?"

Dave e-mails: "The Yaggy-Colby report on suggested changes to the Winneshiek County zoning ordinances was full of mistakes, with county officials forced to spend a lot of time correcting spelling mistakes, formatting mistakes and omission mistakes.  Is there any way Winneshiek County can ask for a refund?"

Mr. Answer Person says: "First, a little background.  Winneshiek County is paying Yaggy-Colby $28,000 for the firm's help in rewriting the county zoning ordinance.

Our reader's question refers to the fact that the County Planning & Zoning Commission Chair, Wendy Stevens, had to spend half an hour on Tuesday, December 9th, suggesting spelling corrections and format corrections before the proposed changes to the county's zoning ordinances could be presented to the Planning & Zoning Commission for a public hearing. 

Then on Monday of this week, several other corrections had to be entered before the County Board could hold its public hearing on the zoning ordinance, including restoring several lines that had been left out in the new version that was created between December 9th and December 29th. 

Of course, our reader's question implies another question: "Should Winneshiek County ask for a refund?"  Mr. Answer Person tries to avoid inserting his own personal opinions in his answers to readers' questions, wanting as much as possible to stick to the facts.  So Mr. A.P. will leave it to others to debate this question.

But let me end this answer with one final comment: The word I have heard used most by other people to describe the documents submitted so far to Winneshiek County has been the word "sloppy."