(A) The Chairperson shall appoint, with the consent of the Board of Trustees, a Board of Adjustment which shall consist of five regular members plus one additional member designated as an alternate who shall attend and serve only when one of the regular members is unable to attend for any reason. Each member of the Board shall serve a term of three years, unless reappointed, and shall be removable only for cause by the Governing Body upon written charges and after a public hearing. Vacancies shall be filled for the unexpired term of any member whose term becomes vacant. One member only of the Board of Adjustment shall be appointed from the membership of the Planning Commission, and the loss of membership on the Planning Commission by such member shall also result in his or her immediate loss of membership on the Board of Adjustment and the appointment of another Planning Commissioner to the Board of Adjustment. After the effective date of this section, the first vacancy occurring on the Board of Adjustment shall be filled by the appointment of a person who resides in the extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction of the municipality at such time as more than 200 persons reside within that area. Thereafter, at all times, at least one member of the Board of Adjustment shall reside outside the corporate boundaries of the municipality but within its extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction.
(B) The members of the Board shall serve without compensation and may be required, in the discretion of the Governing Body, to give a bond in a sum set by resolution of the Governing Body, and conditioned upon the faithful performance of their duties. The Board shall organize at its first meeting in February of each year and elect from its membership a Chairperson and Secretary. It shall be the duty of the Secretary to keep complete and accurate minutes of all Board meetings, showing the vote of each member upon each question, or, if absent or failing to vote, indicating that fact, and shall keep records of its examinations and other official actions, all of which shall be immediately filed in the office of the Board and shall be public record. All meetings of the Board shall be open to the public and shall be held at such times as the Governing Body may designate, or at such other times as the Chairperson may, in his or her discretion, call a meeting. Special meetings may be also held upon the call of any three members of the Board. A majority of the Board shall constitute a quorum for the purposes of doing business. The Board shall adopt rules in accordance with the provisions of Neb. RS 19-901 to 19-914.
(C) It shall be the duty of the Board:
(1) To hear and decide appeals where it is alleged there is error in any order, requirement, decision, or determination made by a municipal official based on or made in the enforcement of any zoning regulation or any regulation relating to the location or soundness of structures;
(2) To hear and decide, in accordance with the provisions of the zoning regulations, requests for interpretation of any map; and
(3) Where by reason of exceptional narrowness, shallowness, or shape of a specific piece of property at the time of the enactment of the zoning regulations, or by reason of exceptional topographic conditions or other extraordinary and exceptional situation or condition of the piece of property, the strict application of any zoning regulation would result in peculiar and exceptional practical difficulties to or exceptional and undue hardships upon the owner of the property, to authorize, upon an appeal relating to the property, a variance from such strict application so as to relieve the difficulties or hardship, if such relief may be granted without substantial detriment to the public good and without substantially impairing the intent and purpose of any ordinance or resolution.
(D) (1) No variance shall be authorized by the Board unless it finds that:
(a) The strict application of the zoning regulation would produce undue hardship;
(b) The hardship is not shared generally by other properties in the same zoning district and the same vicinity;
(c) The authorization of the variance will not be of substantial detriment to adjacent property and the character of the district will not be changed by the granting of the variance; and
(d) The granting of the variance is based upon reason of demonstrable and exceptional hardship as distinguished from variations for purposes of convenience, profit, or caprice.
(2) No variance shall be authorized unless the Board finds that the condition or situation of the property concerned or the intended use of the property is not of so general or recurring a nature as to make reasonably practicable the formulation of a general regulation to be adopted as an amendment to the zoning regulations.
(E) In exercising the above-mentioned powers, the Board may reverse or affirm, wholly or partly, or may modify the order, requirement, decision or determination appealed from, and may make such order, requirement, decision, or determination as ought to be made, and to that end shall have all powers of the officer from whom the appeal is taken. The concurring vote of four members of the Board shall be necessary to reverse any order, requirement, decision, or determination of any municipal official, or to decide in favor of the applicant on any matter upon which it is required to pass under any such regulation or to effect any variation in the regulation.
(F) The Board shall be responsible for making such reports and performing such other duties as the Governing Body may designate. No member of the Governing Body shall serve as a member of the Board of Adjustment. No member of the Board of Adjustment shall serve in the capacity of both Chairperson and Secretary of the Board.
(1990 Code, § 2-201) (Ord. 452, passed 3-5-1996; Ord. 786, passed 3-8-2016)
Statutory reference:
Related state law provisions, see Neb. RS 19-907 through 19-910