A gavel. Photo by Nathan Granger | LINK nky

What you need to know

Phil Ryan, the Park Hills Representative on the Kenton County Planning Commission and treasurer of the commission, unexpectedly announced last week that he would be retiring from the commission at the behest of Park Hills’ Mayor Kathy Zembrodt.

The Park Hills City Council appointed Mike Conway, who currently sits on the city’s Urban Forestry and Economic Development Committees, on Monday to replace him.

Phil Ryan at an event in December 2022. Photo by Joe Simon | LINK nky contributor

Ryan has served on the planning commission for decades across multiple mayoral administrations and has been civically active in other organizations at both the city and county-level. There was tension around the mayor’s ask for him to resign, and other members of the planning commission were taken aback by the mayor’s request.

“For a city to be so short-sighted, I’m disappointed,” said Planning Commission Independence Rep. Maura Snyder at the Commission meeting last week.

Thursday night was Ryan’s final meeting sitting on the commission.

Zembrodt addressed the issue at the City Council on Monday.

“The city is appreciative of his time and commitment,” Zembrodt said, but “it is important that the mayor have good communication with the planning commission so the interests of the city are protected and advanced, and that the mayor would know the goings on at [the planning commission]. As we move forward, it is my hope and desire that the representative will report monthly to the council and the residents, as should be, on the actions of the [Kenton County Planning Commission].”

Ryan stated he had gotten an email from the mayor requesting his resignation the day before the planning commission meeting last week, and there has been some speculation about the mayor’s motivation for wanting him to step down. Cities appoint representatives to county planning commissions and can remove them “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, malfeasance or conflict of interest,” under Kentucky law.

Ryan told LINK nky the mayor had requested his resignation. Commissioners can appeal their removals in court, but Ryan’s comments suggested that he wasn’t looking to belabor the issue and thought it to best to retire, given that he only had seven months left in his term anyway.

“These are good people here [on the planning commission], and I don’t want anybody get in a pissing contest with the City of Park Hills,” Ryan also said last week.

Ryan believed the move was at least partially motivated and contextualized by repeated conflicts over zoning regulations in the city. Like other cities in Kenton County, Park Hills engaged in the Z21 Project, a county-led effort to make its cities’ zoning ordinances better conform to standards and language established by county planning professionals. Park Hills is somewhat of a latecomer to this process.

The planning commission’s Z21 subcommittee met on Oct. 21 to offer a preliminary recommendation on a resolution to adopt the Z21-inspired zoning revisions for Park Hills the City Council had passed the month prior. Council Members Sarah Froelich and Pamela Spoor, as well as the mayor attended the meeting.

The committee members, all of whom are also members of the planning commission, noted the unusual nature of the process and expressed discomfort that the city seemed to be using the Z21 process to facilitate a zoning change, specifically related to the old Szechuan Garden property on Dixie Highway. The council had sparred over how to appropriately zone the property last fall before the October committee meeting.

The restaurant site has been eyed for development by Greg Berling, Mark Zimmerman and Joe Nienaber, the latter of whom is the proprietor of Granite World, which is found near the Szechuan Garden building on Dixie Highway. Nienaber is an elected member of the Kenton County Fiscal Court. He’s also a new member of the city’s Economic Development Committee, the same one headed up by Conway.

The now shuttered Szechuan Garden restaurant in Park Hills. Photo by Nathan Granger | LINK nky

Z21 Committee Chair Gailen Bridges, who represents Bromley on the planning commission, said the Z21 project was meant to be about “form over substance,” i.e., about smoothing out processes and structures to zoning broadly, rather than handling discrete development projects.

“It just seems to be a misuse, to me, of the Z21 process to go in the back door with a controversial zone change,” Bridges said in October.

Although planning professionals with the county noted that there was nothing illegal about doing it this way, other committee members agreed with Bridges. In the end, they all recommended against the city’s draft ordinance.

Ryan was also among the committee members. In October he compared using the Z21 process to change the zone to the typical map amendment process, which has stricter criteria.

“My concern is that if this goes through Z21 – and this is for the mayor and council people – if it goes through Z21, there’s no development plan,” Ryan said. “The developer can come in there, he could have shown you pictures, a hundred of them, now [he] has the authority to go in there and do what he wants to do within the parameters, which can be totally different.”

More fighting within the city council about the ordinance occurred after the committee hearing. The council would finally enshrine the zoning changes in law in January.

Zembrodt sent an email to the planning commission in February demanding an apology about comments of the Z21’s committee members in October, arguing they had characterized the city as acting deceitfully. The letter made its rounds on social media.

When asked, Zembrodt corroborated the letter’s authenticity but denied the Z21 conflict played a role in her call for Ryan’s resignation. In fact, she said, there had been issues with Ryan’s performance in the past, and she had even asked him to step down about year and half ago but declined to share why.

Ryan corroborated that mayor had previously asked him to resign, stating it seemed to be because she believed he was struggling to manage the circumstances of his personal life with his duties on the commission.

Ryan expressed frustration that the mayor may have misunderstood the role of a planning commissioner: Even though they’re appointed by cities, they’re not meant to be wings of city administrations but rather general planners serving the county as a whole. This point of view was expressed by Synder at Thursday’s meeting.

“I vote for every city out here,” Synder said. “I work for everything that’s good in every city. I protect every citizen in every city, not just the city that I represent.”

The planning commission will now need to vote in a new treasurer in the coming months.