WEEDSPORT -- After wrangling over Joint Planning Board term limits, it's back to the drawing board for Brutus and Weedsport to revamp their municipal agreement.

At a joint town and village board meeting Saturday morning, the Town of Brutus and the Village of Weedsport recognized some serious flaws in the original municipal agreement that set up their joint planning board. Both voted separately and unanimously to revisit the agreement prior to voting on new term limits on new members of the board.

A four-member committee -- made up of Brutus Town Supervisor James Hotaling, Weedsport Mayor Jean Saroodis, town board member David Miller and village trustee Chere Perkins -- will examine the contract and suggest proposals to amend it.

Miller was first to point out that problems more serious than term limits exist between the municipalities.

"I think this illustrates far bigger issues," he said. "Term questions are almost irrelevant." He challenged the viability of the joint planning board concept and doubted whether town and village boards could administer it jointly. He considered it a flaw in the structure that both boards don't appoint all board members. The town is also bearing a larger financial burden for the operation and training of the board.

Saroodis said that before term limits were made, the term issue should have come to the village board for discussion, not just discussion among individuals. She said lack of communication was at the heart of the issue.

"I think you're taking the easy way out," she told Miller. "If it had been discussed among everybody," she said, "there may not have been an issue." She stressed that, despite disagreements, the town and village were both working for the betterment of the community.

"There's no problem that can't be solved with communication," she said.

Village trustees Perkins and Chris Lukins, along with Saroodis, had voted against shortening the planning board terms at the last village meeting.

Perkins said she voted "no" because she thought it took a long time to learn what was needed on the planning board, but a seven-year term allowed for a learning curve as well as the opportunity to step down any time.

"I was the other 'no' vote," Lukins said. He said he was concerned that "people were in the dark about it."

Hotaling said planning board members weren't involved in the town's discussion of terms during the interview process.

"This is my third year being on it," Joint planning board members Amy Chirco, from the village, said. "I would hate to see it disbanded after putting in the time."

"I feel we're the cogs in the wheel that keep it going," Joseph Barwinzok, a planning board member from Weedsport said. "We're the ones that keep the community moving."

Saroodis pointed out differences in the way the planning board works with each municipality. In the town, the planning board makes the decision, she said; in the village, it's an advisory board and the trustees make the decision.

"It doesn't do any good to put a member on who only attends half of the meetings or doesn't take part in discussion," Hotaling said, noting that he monitors attendance. While all seven planning board members are appointed, only one is appointed by both municipalities.

Hotaling said four years allowed new people interested in the community to serve.

"I was amazed at the number of people who applied for the joint planning board," he said. "It tells me there are people out there who are interested in the community."