Brimfield reduces pay for zoning board members

Brimfield Township trustees on March 2 reduced the stipend certain board members receive and reduced how often they get it.

The township’s Board of Zoning Appeals and Zoning Commission both consist of five members and two alternates. The Board of Zoning Appeals meets once a month to consider applications for zoning variances and conditional uses of properties. Since 2022, each member’s compensation has been set at $125 per meeting, with an additional $125 for legal training and other work sessions.

Should those sessions be held on the same night as the boards’ regular meetings, they had been counted as separate meetings and were paid accordingly. Now Board of Zoning Appeals and Zoning Commission members will be paid $100 no matter how many matters are addressed in a single evening.

Board of Zoning Appeals 

The Board of Zoning Appeals’ January 2026 meeting was canceled, but convened on Feb. 11, 2026, for its regular meeting and one legal training session. Assuming all seven members attended both meetings, Brimfield’s maximum payout for that evening would have been $1,750, said township Economic Development and Zoning Inspector Mike Hlad.

Had the new rules been in effect then, the max payout would have been $700, Hlad said.

However, if the February training session would have fallen on a separate day, that would have meant another $700, meaning a potential maximum savings of $350, Hlad said. There is no way to ensure that attorneys will be able to coordinate their schedules with the Board of Zoning Appeals’ usual meeting nights.

Either way, it’s cheaper to bring attorneys to the township than it is to send all the members to the Columbus-area Ohio Township Association for three-day conferences every year, Hlad said.

With the new rules in place, Board of Zoning Appeals members will each receive $100 for their March 11 meeting. The maximum payout? $700, hard stop.

Zoning Commission 

Brimfield’s seven Zoning Commission members are likewise getting a pay cut. They had also been receiving $125 each for their monthly meetings, but are now being paid $100. Another change: When public hearings, work sessions or legal trainings were scheduled for the same night as regular Zoning Commission meetings, that translated to increased payouts. Now, no matter what else is scheduled on the same night, the pay will be $100 per person, Hlad said.

Some context: Feb. 12’s Zoning Commission meeting included four public hearings, its regular meeting and a training session, meaning a maximum $5,250 payout for the township. Had the new rules been in effect, that meeting would have cost Brimfield $700, Hlad said.

Public hearings are typically scheduled on different evenings than the zoning commission’s regular meetings, but Hlad said the Portage County Regional Planning Commission happened to return four proposals to Brimfield at the same time. Legally proscribed timelines kicked in, forcing the Zoning Commission into high gear.

Who can do what, and when, also factors into scheduling decisions. By law, Hlad said, the time, date and location of public meetings must be set and published ahead of time. Some public hearings about zoning matters attract a great number of people and extensive discussion, but township leaders cannot permit any hearing to overtake the advertised starting time of the commission’s regular meeting.

“If we know it's something people will be upset about, we have to schedule it on a separate night to allow for three or four hours of people expressing concerns,” Hlad said.

That means more pay for Zoning Commission members, but everyone gets their say and the township trustees are able to make more informed decisions, he said.

Small savings 

Hlad said the permit fees applicants pay are not a revenue stream for the township; Brimfield Fiscal Officer Jasmine Golden said the money adds up to less than 2% of Brimfield’s budget. What comes in soon goes out in the form of the boards’ compensation; legal, administrative and engineering fees; and the township’s Regional Planning Commission dues, Hlad said.

Hlad’s accounting shows that permit fees totaled $111,426 in 2023, $161,510 in 2024 and $79,288 in 2025. According to Golden, the county paid Zoning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals members $23,300 in 2023, $28,725 in 2024 and $28,500 in 2025.

Explaining the discrepancy between the amounts received and paid out each year, Golden said legal expenses add up quickly, especially when township leaders are pursuing public infrastructure initiatives such as Tax Increment Financing (TIF) agreements with private companies. Also, Planning Commission dues alone are roughly $10,000 a year, she said.

Trustee Kevin Scott, though, alleged that the township may have been raking money in, at least at one point. He noted that the township raised its permit fees to current levels in March 2022 but didn’t raise its Board of Zoning Appeals and Zoning Commission stipends until November of that year.

“So it's OK to make money from March until November, but you can't make any money after that?” he asked.

It took that long for township leaders and legal counsel to complete a statewide study to determine how much the rates should be increased, Hlad said.

The income and expenses must more or less match, even when permit applications decline, which Hlad said has recently been the case. That, he said, is why he cautioned township leaders on March 2 that the per diems had to be dialed back.

“I worked all of the numbers so that the permit fees match what we’re paying out,” Hlad said. “We can't overcharge people. My main concern is to make sure that the veterans and seniors still continue to not pay for certain permits.”