Island Lake looking to reorganize, clean house

It's not New Year's Eve yet, but the Island Lake village board is already talking about spring cleaning.

At a board meeting Thursday, trustees discussed both sharpening village ordinances and reorganizing village committees.

Trustee John Ponio said he's working on a project to update and organize village code.

"I'm going to make sure (the ordinances are) all complete," Ponio said, estimating the work could be done by June or July of 2008. "It's probably a three-month project for them to do just the zoning portion."

He suggested the board start discussions with members of both the zoning board and the planning board about if and how those boards could be combined. Trustees are also mulling creating an architectural review committee.

"In the meantime, I would like somebody to contact the planning and zoning boards," Ponio said. "I'm looking for their input."

Trustee Rich Garling said he liked the idea of combining the boards but said the process might be complicated.

"I think we all agreed with the concept," Garling said. "There are a lot of legal changes that will have to be made to our ordinances... There's much more to this than simply doing this."

Mayor Tom Hyde said going to the board members might be premature.

"They're going to have questions of us that we're not going to be able to answer," he said. "We have some things pending in front of the boards, I think, that need to be completed."

Trustees agreed there may be issues that must be resolved first or transferred to a combined board but said they wanted board members in on the process.

"I would rather do it in January, to talk to them," Ponio said. "At least they can have some idea of where they need to go."