All Aboard Planning

Staff reports, hearings, and the media

Writing staff reports, presentations and honest visuals, the roles of staff and officials, meeting procedure, hearings and ex parte contacts, evidence-based arguments, and working with the press.

Lesson 14 of 40 · about 30 minutes

Learning objectives

  • Distinguish the roles of professional staff, appointed boards, and elected officials in planning decisions.
  • Write a staff report that leads with the recommendation and analyzes the request against adopted criteria.
  • Build an evidence-based argument and communicate technical findings and risk to non-experts, in writing, in presentations, and with honest visuals.
  • Explain hearing requirements for quasi-judicial decisions, including notice, the record, and ex parte contacts.
  • Describe how a public body conducts business: agendas, quorums, motions, and consent agendas.
  • Handle media inquiries, misinformation, and political pressure professionally.

Key concepts

Who does what

  • Professional staff gather facts, analyze options, apply adopted plans and codes, and make recommendations.
  • Appointed bodies advise or decide within the authority the law gives them. A planning commission typically holds hearings on plans and rezonings and recommends to the governing body; a board of zoning adjustment (or appeals) typically decides variances and appeals of administrative decisions. In some places a hearing examiner, an appointed official who is often an attorney, holds those quasi-judicial hearings instead of a citizen board.
  • Elected officials (a city council or county board) make the legislative decisions: adopting plans, zoning ordinances, rezonings, and budgets.

The short version: staff analyze and recommend; elected officials decide. Staff owe decision-makers honest, complete analysis, and once a lawful decision is made, staff carry it out professionally even if they recommended otherwise.

Staff recommend, with arrows to two bodies. The planning commission recommends, and passes its recommendation to the council or county board, which decides plans, rezonings, and budgets. The zoning board decides variances and appeals. A note says staff analyze; officials decide.
Which body hears a matter depends on the kind of decision, but staff's role is the same in every path: analysis and a recommendation.Tap the figure to open it full size.

9 more sections follow in the full lesson.

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