Seeing the Norwich City Council once again embroiled in a controversial land-use issue leads us again to urge it to end the archaic practice of also functioning as the zoning board.

The job of zoning boards is to objectively judge proposals based on whether they make sense from a land-use and planning perspective. These boards should make zoning decisions strictly on evidence and testimony presented at hearings, following explicit state regulations.

As the chief elected officials of the city, council aldermen have a different agenda - driving economic development, keeping constituents happy and being responsive to their concerns. But when acting as the zoning board, a city council alderman cannot even discuss the issue with a constituent outside of the formal hearing process. How absurd is that?

The current brouhaha involves a zoning regulation approved by the city council/zoning board two years ago. The regulation allows developers to propose up to eight units per acre of housing in any residential zone with at least 10 acres of land if that housing is for senior use only, defined as 55 and older. The intent was to provide more senior housing for a city with a growing elderly population with the expectation that the elderly tend to be good, quiet neighbors.

But the regulation became controversial when the owners of the 60-acre Wilcox farm and sawmill sought permits to build 185 senior condominium units on rural Scotland, Hansen and While Plains roads. Neighbors claimed the site was not appropriate for that use. Though the system worked, with the planning and wetland agencies rejecting the plan, the fallout continues.

Now Alderman Jonathan Jacaruso has proposed repealing the entire regulation, the kind of knee-jerk reaction that an independent, nonpolitical zoning board would not make.