Surry County Planning Commission meetings will now begin at 6 p.m., per a slate of changes the body voted unanimously to make to its bylaws on Feb. 24.

Until now, the Planning Commission has met the fourth Monday of each month at 7 p.m., though the Board of Supervisors and School Board each meet at 6 p.m. The commissioners previously discussed making the change in January, but per the bylaws, the commission must wait at least 24 hours to vote on any bylaw amendments, delaying the vote a month.

The adopted language specifies that any public hearing is to begin no earlier than 6:30 p.m., which would be the time advertised in the public notices state law requires to be published two weeks in advance of the hearings.

County Attorney Lola Perkins said in January that toward the end of last year the county began posting to the public notices page on its website materials associated with a rezoning or permit requiring a public hearing within 24 hours of the required public hearing advertisement being published in a newspaper, which is already beyond what is legally required.

State law only mandates that a permit or rezoning application and associated materials be physically available to the public at county offices, and that the advertisement specifies where to find them, Perkins said. 

Those notices and related materials now appear at https://www.surrycountyva.gov/413/Public-Notices.

At the request of Commissioner Dianne Cheek, the bylaws now set a maximum of five members for Planning Commission committees, up from four. Another of Cheek’s January requests, which was for commission meeting agendas to be published on the county’s website at least five days in advance, up from four. The adopted language, which mirrors the bylaws of the Board of Supervisors, now specifies that agendas for special and emergency meetings are to be provided “as soon as practicable.”