City of Grand Island

Grand Island, Neb. — The Grand Island Regional Planning Commission is updating its application deadline to 28 days before a planned RPC meeting, which will replace the current 20-day deadline. The move is in response to recent changes and decisions made by Lee Enterprises.

Lee Enterprises, the owner of The Grand Island Independent and various other publications, is now requiring legal notices to be submitted a minimum of four days prior to running the notice in the newspaper. Lee Enterprises previously made the decision to eliminate its Sunday and Monday print editions of the paper. The new requirement combined with the reduced publication dates is what is prompting the RPC deadline change.

State law requires that public hearing notices for actions related to zoning, comprehensive plans and other activities on which the planning commission is required to make recommendations be advertised at least ten days prior to the hearing in a newspaper of general circulation in the community.

The commission typically meets on the first Wednesday of every month. To ensure that items requiring a public hearing are considered at the earliest possible meeting, the RPC is moving the deadline by eight days to give staff time to review the applications for completeness and prepare the notifications for submission to the newspaper in a timely manner.

These changes will go into effect for the April 2 meeting of the planning commission, which means the application deadline will be March 5. Any submissions received after March 5, but on or before April 16 will be held until the meeting scheduled for May 7.