Planning & Building Department

This report will serve as a brief summary of the 2019 calendar year for the Plan Commission, Board of Zoning Appeals, Building Commission, and all other activities related to the City's Planning and Building Department. This report will review the current status of the staff's 2019 goals, summarize all the different petitions heard by the Plan Commission and BZA, give a brief synopsis of the development trends, provide a review of the code enforcement activities for the year, and establish the staff's goals for the upcoming year.

The City of Shelbyville’s Planning and Building Department (PABD) serves as the main professional, technical, and administrative staff for the City’s Plan Commission, Board of Zoning Appeals, Technical Review Committee, and Building Commission, and serves alongside other city departments to facilitate some of the responsibilities and needs of the City’s Board of Public Works and Safety, Common Council, and Mayor’s Office. The department staff works to advise the many boards and commissions on the decisions they are tasked with making, and performs the day-to-day tasks of these boards and commissions to ensure responsible development throughout the year. These day-to-day tasks include, but are not limited to; plan review for compliance, general code enforcement, permitting, inspections, floodplain administration, and grant writing/administration.

While this report serves as a more comprehensive review of 2019, below are some basic figures that show the work performed by the PABD in 2019.

During the 2019 calendar year, the Shelbyville Plan Commission heard 26 cases and the Shelbyville Board of Zoning Appeals heard 18 cases on a wide variety of projects, many of them intertwined between these two bodies. The petitions heard in 2019 were handled in a thorough, yet efficient manner. This report will serve as a review of all of these petitions heard by the Plan Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals, along with a review of the goals established by the staff, and a summary of the work completed in 2019.

In last year’s report, the planning staff developed goals for 2018. These goals included both procedural improvements to the day-to-day operations of the department, as well as long-range planning tasks that help guide the community’s elected officials and other decision makers. Below is a review of the current status of those goals:

Assist community organizations like Mainstreet Shelbyville and The Shelby County Development Corporation in promoting economic development throughout the community.

Use geospatial data to proactively identify and remedy areas with nuisance code violations before they start detracting from the character and value of the neighborhood.