According to Google, the distance from Fond du La, Wisc., to Kyle is 1,268.3 miles. Eric Drazkowski, senior engineer for Excel Engineering, traveled that distance yesterday and will travel it again tomorrow. It turned out to be a wasted 2,500-mile roundtrip. That’s because two members of Kyle’s Board of Adjustments failed, for one reason or another, to travel only a half-dozen miles at most to attend tonight’s board meeting.
Drazkowski left his Wisconsin home office yesterday to come to Kyle to testify tonight at the scheduled Board of Adjustments meeting on behalf of BioLife Plasma Services’ request for a parking variance on property where it plans to locate a Kyle facility at 906 Seton Parkway. He told me while we were waiting for a pair of commissioners who never appeared that he will be returning to Wisconsin tomorrow.
Terri Thompson and Paul Terry, the two most senior members of the Board of Adjustments, failed to appear. That left the board one member short of a quorum. Not only that, neither Planning Director Howard J. Koontz nor assistant Debbie A Guerra said they received any communication from either Thompson or Terry about their intentions not to attend tonight’s meeting. In fact, around 6:45 p.m., 15 minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, Koontz asked Guerra to contact Thompson and Terry. She returned from that effort to say she learned that Thompson was "out of town," but that she was unable to make contact with Terry.
What happens next is somewhat unclear, even to Koontz. Next Monday is Columbus Day, a municipal holiday, which would be the next available day to have a meeting in which the Board of Adjustments could act on the variance, which needs to happen before the Planning & Zoning Commission can consider a conditional use permit for BioLife. That permit request is apparently on P&Z’s agenda for its Oct. 11 meeting. Koontz thought about having the meeting prior to P&Z’s session, which, like tonight’s scheduled meeting, begins at 6:30 p.m., but other Board of Adjustment members said traffic concerns could make an earlier start time problematic. So Koontz said he will toy with the idea of having P&Z take an hour recess right after it gavels its 6:30 p.m. meeting into session to allow the Board of Adjustments to convene and act on the variance.
But there’s an unanswered question about that as well and that’s whether advance publishing requirements for the public hearing that accompanies the variance request would prohibit a Tuesday meeting to vote on that request. Koontz did not know off the top of his head if a rescheduled public hearing had the same public notification requirements as an original hearing, although it’s worth noting there was absolutely no one in the council chambers tonight who came to speak at the pubic hearing. So there’s that.
For the record, Excel Engineering is the company that will be handling at least part of the design or construction of the proposed BioLife facility that I must admit I had mistakenly referred to in earlier columns as a "blood bank." I have since learned there are significant differences between a facility that solicits blood and one that takes plasma, as BioLife is designed to do.
Blood is the main bodily fluid and is responsible for transporting important nutrients, oxygen, carbon dioxide and waste products to and away from the cells. Plasma is the yellow liquid component of blood and constitutes about 55 percent of the total blood volume. Donating blood at the typical blood bank takes about eight to 10 minutes and donors must wait about two months between donations. Donating plasma takes around an hour and 15 minutes, but plasma donors can donate once a month, because, unlike blood, the body can easily replenish plasma.
Now if the city could only find a way to replenish a few its board and commission members.
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