Planning and Zoning has discussed changes to what's permitted during applicant questioning in the past, and is now settling on language for those new rules.
Changes have been discussed previously about changing document submission deadlines to better accommodate Sussex County staff after the committee’s meeting day changed.
Sussex County Administrator Todd Lawson
"When we moved our Wednesdays, the deadline for submitting documents, the 10-day-deadlines put us on the weekend, so we changed that to 12 days, which will make it a business day" he said.
In addition to the new submission deadline, would-be applicants would also receive a designated timeframe to rebut information submitted during public comment.
“Clearly that’s not going to be necessary in many instances, but the intent of that is to allow an applicant- if there’s information that needs to be clarified, or if there’s information that was stated that’s not accurate- the applicant gets an opportunity to make that known to the commission.” said Lawson. "The commission has been pretty active in asking questions of the applicant. If there's people in favor of -or in opposition to- an application... the commission might not know that there's some inconsistency stated by somebody in the public, and that gives the applicant an opportunity to answers those"
Lawson says it's to the benefit of the public, the applicant, and the commission that they have as accurate a record as possible, and says that this rule change could further that goal.
Currently, applicants are typically limited to answering questions posed by the commission, without any chance to rebut claims made during public comment.
The commission didn’t act on any changes during its latest meeting but will include the changes on their February 18th agenda for potential adoption.
