By Susan de Castro McCann

Redstone Review Editor

LYONS – Lyons will face new challenges and take a new direction when the trustees and former and current mayor take their seats on the town board after they are sworn in on April 19.

The newly elected trustees are Kirk Udovich, Kathy Carroll, Sandy Banta, Kathy Jacobson, LaVern Johnson and Ed Bruder. Udovich and Carroll are incumbents garnering the most votes of 410 and 409 respectively. Johnson received 375 votes. She was appointed to the board in 1998 then elected in 2000 and elected again in 2002. She was term-limited in 2004, but ran in that election and was defeated. Banta with 401 votes, Jacobson with 385 votes, and Bruder with 367 votes are newcomers to the board. Write-in candidate David Gouge received 97 votes. A total of 507 voters mailed in ballots, a good turnout for Lyons.

Former Mayor Julie Van Domelen ran unopposed and received 455 votes. Mayor Van Domelen was first elected in a special election a year ago in April 2009. This year’s election was nearly cancelled because only six candidates decided to run for trustee and one candidate for mayor. Mayor Van Domelen addressed that issue last month saying, “As I thought more deeply about what it means to be able to vote, I grew more uncomfortable with the idea of canceling elections.”

Elections were eventually not cancelled and voters came out to choose the candidates they want to guide the direction of the town for the next two years.

Many important issues will fall on the trustees’ plates during that time. Medical marijuana regulations continue to loom up like the gorilla in the room over the entire state. Small towns such as Lyons struggle to find a solution to zoning issues for both growers and dispensaries.

On April 5 the town board voted to extend the moratorium on issuing licenses for new medical marijuana dispensaries. The current moratorium expired on April 8 and the new moratorium will start up again on May 7 and run until Sept. 10. Trustee Brian Donnell had several objections to the extension to the moratorium. The board changed the wording of the ordinance to accommodate the objections, but in the end Donnell voted against the ordinance. Trustee Juli Waugh also voted against the ordinance to extend the moratorium.

The town staff hopes to have some proposed zoning regulations in place by that time. The town also hopes that the state will have some regulations in place by that time. A state bill regulating marijuana dispensaries and growers has already passed the state senate.

The new board will have a new Lyons Comprehensive Plan as a guide for many decisions. It will take the new board members a while to get up to speed on the huge document. The new comp plan was approved by the Planning and Community Development Commission, PCDC, and then ratified by the former town board on April 5. There were several community workshops where residents gave input concerning the new document before it was approved. There was very little comment on the comp plan when the town board actually ratified the document.

One sticking point in the document was the issue of the current town ordinance which says that all annexations over five acres and not in a contiguous line with town land must go to a vote of the people. Local developers see this as a stumbling block to annexing and developing land near the town, but some residents do not want to lose control over how land is developed. Jeff Cornell, chairman of the PCDC, said that the PCDC changed the wording of the comp plan to read that if the town wants to change the annexation ordinance it should go to a vote of the people.

Mayor Julie Van Domelen said that she would be very reluctant to take away a vote of the people unless the residents themselves voted to do so.

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