By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

A county commission vote at the year’s second meeting on Jan. 8 will be reviewed during a future meeting.

Commission chairman Dianne Novak said at Monday’s meeting she’d spoken with a couple of attorneys about commissioners accepting a resignation with a condition attached on Jan. 8, and both said the commission should not have done things in that manner. Novak doesn’t want to change a vote made in the past, but wants the commission to follow its own rules in the future.

The Jan. 8 vote was to accept Nick Kraus’s immediate resignation as chairman of Marion County Planning and Zoning Board with Jeff Bina to fill out the remaining year of Kraus’s term.

“I want a simultaneous motion contingent on your appointing someone to fill my seat,” Kraus said at that time. “There’s not anybody I would rather serve in my seat than Jeff Bina.”

Bina was elected to serve as planning and zoning board chairman at the board’s March 8 meeting.

Kraus had spoken at a contentious Dec. 29 commission meeting in opposition to Bina not being reappointed to the board. Novak had nominated William Kroupa for Bina’s expiring seat, and Kraus warned that board members might resign.

After commissioners sparred over Novak’s nomination, with then-chairman Randy Dallke threatening to vote against Kroupa’s appointment in retribution for Novak having earlier voted against his nomination of Mike Beneke to serve on the economic development corporation board, they voted to appoint Kroupa.

Novak said Monday that county policy gives the commission, not the board, authority to appoint members.

“We need to come to a firm policy,” Novak said. “We need to follow our own rules and statutes. If we don’t follow them, how can we expect anyone else to follow them?”