Commissioner Robert Bain

The chair who reshaped the posture

Bain assumed the chair after Krzyminski's November 2024 departure, joining the board with three new commissioners (Hoisington, May, Cramer at January 2025; Tidona by April). The board he chaired through 2025 was structurally different from the board that preceded it. Where the predecessor board had been reliably approve-with-conditions, Bain's chair coincided with the board's pivot to selective opposition: the unanimous 0-5 denial of 7-Eleven Wellness Way (October 7, 2025), the 1-5 denial of the Camping World flagpole ordinance (September 2, 2025), the formal engagement of DPZ CoDesign for the comp plan update. The board did not become anti-development under Bain — it became willing to deny.

The principled-line discipline

Bain's voting pattern reads through principle, not bloc. He voted NO on the C-2 self-storage removal (January 7, 2025) — questioning the intent of targeting specific businesses without explanation. He voted NO on the flagpole ordinance citing constitutional concerns about favoring the U.S. flag in code. He voted YES on Juniata Street's small-business adaptive reuse where May voted NO on up-zoning concerns — and YES again at the revised June 2025 hearing where the applicant returned with the lower-intensity Residential/Office FLU. The chair's pattern is feedback-loop discipline: the commission's role is to surface the substantive issue; the applicant's role is to return with the response.

The transition to council

By March 2, 2026 Colby chairs the PZC and Bain has become Councilman Bain. The "concise report or memo" template Chair Colby announced for summarizing commission discussions to council was originally developed by Councilman Bain. The chair's institutional design persists past the chair's tenure on the board. Bain's most durable contribution to the corpus may be the bridge he built between P&Z and council voice rather than any single vote during his chair.