GIVING ADVICE: COMMISSIONS SHAPE LOCAL POLICIES AND DAY-TO-DAY LIFE

Carol Peters, Cape Girardeau airport anministrative secretary, took notes as Cape Girardeau Airport Manager Bruce Loy explained the need to have the airport restaurant reopened. He feels it would bring in business for other areas of the airport.

Herb Annis made a proposal for subdividing a lot at Brookwood and Sherwood to Cape Girardeau Planning and Zoning Commissioners Jim Ramage and Tom Holshouser.

Once a month, R.J. McKinney and his colleagues on Cape Girardeau's Planning and Zoning Commission gather at City Hall to weigh requests for zoning changes, subdivision plats, special use permits and a myriad of other land use issues.

Not everyone they hear from is happy. At the May meeting, a group of residents showed up to protest plans to build storage units on Perry Avenue.

The units would create too much additional noise and too much extra traffic, residents said.

The commission voted to recommend allowing the storage units, proposed by Mitch Shelby and Jeff Overbeck, to go ahead.

The Cape Girardeau City Council, though, decided a few weeks later, to deny the request.

Sometimes that happens, McKinney says. What he and members of the city's other advisory commissions have to remember is they can only make recommendations. The final decision is made by the City Council.

"That's the council's prerogative if they want to overrule us," McKinney said. "That's what they're there for."

Cape Girardeau has 15 advisory commissions covering everything from the public library's operations to Vision 2000 to cable television to tourism and historic preservation.

The city of Jackson has three advisory commissions -- planning and zoning, parks and the library board.

Advisory boards' activities shape the cities' policies and ordinances, which in turn shape residents' everyday lives.

"They really perform a critical extension of the mayor's and Board of Aldermen's activities," said Steve Wilson, Jackson's city administrator. "I think the city government would be far less effective and efficient without them."

Planning and zoning commissioners decide land use issues, which means they often face controversial decisions and irate residents.

"And I don't blame them," McKinney said. "Some of the decisions that I have voted for in the past, if I had been a neighbor to that particular location, I probably would have been opposed to it."

The Planning and Zoning Commission has also had to ride herd over recent proposals to put a halfway house for state inmates in the city, and the issue of whether or not to allow mobile homes to be located in residential areas is an ongoing hot-button issue, he said.

"Sometimes it's a little controversial," McKinney said.

The commission also helped put together the list of road and street improvement projects to be paid for through the Total Transportation Fund after "many, many meetings," McKinney said.

He said the commission has to look at the big picture and how developments will affect the city as a whole, as well as how beneficial or detrimental changing the makeup of a particular neighborhood will be.

If the Planning and Zoning Commission looks at shaping the city's future, Cape Girardeau's Historic Preservation Commission is intent on saving its past.

"I think the purpose of the commission is to help preserve the city's heritage, its built heritage, so we don't lose all of these things," said Brian Driscoll, vice chair of the Historic Preservation Commission. "I understand progress is a good thing, but I think we need to temper that with a view towards the past as well."

The Historic Preservation Commission put together a grant to fund a survey that is now under way of the city's historic structures. The commission also helped outline guidelines for establishing historic districts and designating local historic landmarks.

And if someone wants to make changes to those landmarks, the commission has to decide whether the changes are appropriate, Driscoll said.

Advisory commission members are volunteers and are appointed to their posts.