More concerns expressed about the quality of work by a consultant in updating the county's zoning ordinances

In 2014 the Winneshiek County Board hired the consulting firm of Yaggy Colby--now called SEH – Yaggy--to help revise and update the county's zoning ordinances at a cost of $27,000.

When the first set of proposed revisions was presented to the county board earlier in January, at least one supervisor--John Beard--expressed concerns about the quality of work done by the firm, especially the number of language and typographical errors in the document.  The revisions were unanimously approved by the county board, however.

On Tuesday night there were more concerns about the quality of the work done so far--this time coming from members of the County Planning & Zoning Commission.  Commission members reviewed the ordinance revision process to date and found much to praise, but also much to criticize involving the consultant's work.

One complaint was that the Planning & Zoning Commission members never got to see a full ordinance revision work product before the county board held its public hearing in January.  Another complaint was that the proposed zoning ordinance revisions were not made on a computer, so P & Z Commission members couldn't see a current print-out of the revisions.  P & Z members said proposed revisions were also not available to study subcommittee members until the last minute.

Planning & Zoning Commission members said future consulting contracts signed by the county board should have performance benchmarks, including benchmarks for timeliness and accuracy.

The Planning & Zoning Commission is expecting to work on other zoning ordinance changes this spring and summer, then tackle proposed wording on frac sand mining regulations in October.