Lake Zurich considers citizen's advisory board

Lake Zurich is considering establishing a citizen's advisory board to do courtesy reviews of future downtown redevelopment proposals and offer input to the village board.

The idea will be discussed tonight at a special meeting of the village board's committee of the whole with representatives of various homeowner's associations and residents. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the village hall board room, 70 E. Main St.

"The goal is to get communitywide input on major development that affects the village so that the village board can benefit from a better cross-section of representation on issues," Mayor John Tolomei said. "It's more of an evaluation right now to see whether such a group would make sense."

Lake Zurich has a park and recreation advisory board made up of resident volunteers. That board has helped establish new rules for tree preservation, and reviews development issues related to parks.

The citizen's advisory board would likely consist of roughly 12 members of varying professional and geographic backgrounds handpicked to represent the entire community.

Its role would be to determine if development proposals meet the requirements of the downtown master plan before they go to the plan commission, zoning board and village board.

Lake Zurich is in the midst of revising its downtown redevelopment master plan and establishing new development guidelines to be unveiled in coming months.

"They (the advisory board) may be a sounding board for review of the new master plan, as well as the development guidelines or any future rewrites," Village Administrator Bob Vitas said. "We would want to get more eyes on the issues from a broader public audience rather than just a neighborhood."

Similar boards have been established in larger cities across the country where economic development is a primary focus, Vitas said.

"It makes it a little bit more difficult for local government to move as quickly as they might want to," Vitas said. "It doesn't slow the process of development approval. Rather, what it does is it results in better decision making. From a community planning perspective, with the issues that we face here, it's not such a bad idea to hear what other people are thinking, not just at election time but all year round."