GRATIS — Gary Goffinet volunteered recently to be the new Zoning Inspector for the Village of Gratis.

Goffinet is a fairly new resident of the village, having only lived there for the past year, but he wanted to find a way to get involved further in the community. Plus, as a retired cop, he believes he has the demeanor necessary for the position.

“I wanted to present him to the council,” Mayor David Johnston said. “When I was talking to him, I told him that we would give him a copy of the zoning book and let him look it over. We will check into getting him bonded and then at the next council meeting when he comes back, as soon as he’s sure that he wants to take the position, we’ll get him sworn in and bonded to be the zoning inspector.”

He added, they’ve been looking for someone to fill the position for 10-15 years. He said the village does not have to post the position, since it is a volunteer position.

Goffinet said, “You’ve all met me before. I get along with people and I know the rules and regulations. I’ve been called every name in the world as a retired cop. So, nobody can call me anything I haven’t been called before. I wanted to run for council, but everyone is doing such a good job and I haven’t been here but a year. I thought this would be a good way to get my foot in the water.”

“In the meantime we also need to show the zoning thing to our solicitors, since there’s a couple things in there we might need to tweak as far as the process we go through since we don’t have a planning or zoning appeals board,” Mayor Johnston added. “Council has been taking that position and doing it for a number of years, but we might want to change some of the writing to make it easy to follow.”