Dublin’s Zoning Board of Adjustment is looking at some of its fees, although not the application fee itself, and debating if it should rework the application process.

Board Chair John Morris  said the newspaper notices and postage fees are up for discussion, and he proposed the newspaper notice fee be raised to $150 from $125. Additionally, the postage fee could be raised to $12 from $7.85. Morris cited rising costs as the reason, saying he does not know when the fees were last raised. According to the zoning ordinance and land use regulations, the Zoning Board is required to post notice of a public hearing in a local newspaper and send a notice by certified mail to residents paid by the applicant.

“I don’t think it’s fair to the town to subsidize these applications,” Morris said.

Zoning Board members Margot Sprague and Jay Schechter agreed with that proposal.

In addition, Morris suggested reworking the application process to clarify that a hearing must happen before any potential site visits. The application will also have to be submitted two weeks in advance of a regularly scheduled meeting with no visit. For applications that request a site visit first, the application would potentially have to be submitteed a month in advance. Additionally, Morris said they are not required to perform a site visit.

“If you actually want us to do a site visit first, then you are going to have to agree to delay because we have to arrange time for the site visit, we might have to get the [Conservation Commission] in, we might have to get an expert,” Morris said. “I just felt like it was way too much.”

This proposal comes after Dublin Lake Club submitted an application in which  a public hearing and a site visit were on the same day.

Other Zoning Board members in attendance agreed with the proposal, However, Mathew Saveliev, secretary and alternate, noted it could be easier for him to envision the property during the hearing and presentation if he already saw the property.