At the special called Jan. 30 Zoning and Platting Commission meeting, Chair Jolene Kiolbassa shared an email from staff liaison Andrew Rivera with her colleagues. The email said that the joint land use commission meetings that have been held since the end of 2016 to review the CodeNEXT drafts, which have to date been chaired alternatively by Kiolbassa and Planning Commission Chair Stephen Oliver, would now only be chaired by Oliver unless the commissions decide to elect a special joint chair. Rivera, who told the Austin Monitor he was relaying a higher-up decision from CodeNEXT staff, cited the city charter section that states that City Council only requires a recommendation from the Planning Commission, not ZAP, on a code rewrite. ZAP Commissioner Jim Duncan lamented the clarification, saying that it distracts from the review and instead entangles the land use commissions into a “jurisdictional pissing match.”
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