The mayor with the consent of the city council shall appoint a board of adjustment which shall consist of five regular members, plus one additional member designated as an alternate who shall attend and serve only when one of the regular members is unable to attend for any reason, each to be appointed for a term of three years and removable for cause by the appointing authority upon written charges and after a public hearing.

Any citizen within the zoning jurisdictional area of the City shall be eligible for membership. One regular member only of the board of adjustment shall be appointed from the City membership of the planning commission, and loss of membership on the planning commission by such member shall also result in immediate loss of membership on the board of adjustment and appointment of another planning commissioner to the board of adjustment.

The board of adjustment shall adopt rules necessary for the conduct of its affairs and in keeping with the provisions of this chapter.

Meetings of the board shall be held at the call of the chairman and at such other times as the board may determine. Such chairman, or in his or her absence the acting chairman, may administer oaths and compel the attendance of witnesses. All meetings of the board shall be open to the public.

The board shall keep minutes of its proceedings, showing the vote of each member upon each question, or, if absent or failing to vote, indicating such fact, and shall keep records of its examinations and other official actions, all of which shall be immediately filed in the office of the board and shall be a public record.

Appeals to the board may be taken by any person aggrieved by any officer, department, board, or bureau of the City affected by any decision of an administrative officer, provided, such appeal shall be taken within ten days after the decision of the administrative officer, by filing with the office from whom the appeal is taken, and with the clerk of the board, written notice of appeal specifying the grounds thereof. The officer from whom the appeal is taken shall forthwith transmit to the board all papers constituting the record upon which the action appealed from was taken.

The board shall fix a reasonable time for hearing of the appeal, give public notice thereof in a newspaper of general circulation in the City one time at least ten days prior to such hearing, as well as due notice to the parties in interest, and decide the same within a reasonable time. The hearing shall be public and any party may appear in person, by agent, or by attorney.

Prior to the filing of the appeal with the clerk of the board and the administrative officer from whose decision the appeal is requested, the appellant shall pay to the city treasurer a processing fee, as provided by a fee schedule approved by the city council, which shall not be refundable.

The board of adjustment shall, subject to appropriate conditions and safeguards as may be established by the city council, have the following powers:

1. To hear and decide appeals where it is alleged there is error in any order, requirement, decision, or determination made by an administrative official or agency based on or made in the enforcement of any zoning regulation or any regulation relating to the location or soundness of structures.
2. To hear and decide, in accordance with the provisions of any zoning regulation, requests for interpretation of any map, or for decisions upon other special questions upon which the board is authorized by any such regulation to pass.
3. Where by reason of exceptional narrowness, shallowness, or shape of a specific piece of property at the time of the enactment of the zoning regulations, or by reason of exceptional topographic conditions or other extraordinary and exceptional situation or condition of such piece of property, the strict application of any enacted regulation under this chapter would result in peculiar and exceptional practical difficulties to, or exceptional and undue hardships upon the owner of such property, to authorize, upon an appeal relating to the property, a variance from such strict application so as to relieve such difficulties or hardship, if such relief may be granted without substantial detriment to the public good and without substantially impairing the intent and purpose of this code or any ordinance or resolution. No such variance shall be authorized by the board unless it finds that:
   1. The strict application of the zoning regulations would produce undue hardship;
   2. Such hardship is not shared generally by other properties in the same zoning district and the same vicinity;
   3. The authorization of such variance will not be of substantial detriment to adjacent property and the character of the district will not be changed by the granting of variance; and
   4. The granting of such variance is based upon reason of demonstrable and exceptional hardship as distinguished from variations for purposes of convenience, profit, or caprice.
   No variance shall be authorized unless the board finds that the condition or situation of the property concerned or the intended use of the property is not of so general or recurring a nature as to make reasonably practicable the formulation of a general regulation to be adopted as an amendment to the zoning regulations.

In exercising the above-mentioned powers, the board may reverse or affirm, wholly or partly, or may modify the order, requirement, decision, or determination appealed from, and may make such order, requirement, decision, or determination as ought to be made, and to that end shall have all the powers of the officer from whom the appeal is taken. The concurring vote of four members of the board shall be necessary to reverse any order, requirement, decision, or determination of any such administrative official, or to decide in favor of the applicant on any matter upon which it is required to pass under any such regulation or to effect any variation in such regulation.

Any person or persons, jointly or severally, aggrieved by any decision of the Board of Adjustment may appeal as provided by Section 19-912, Reissue Revised Statutes of 1943 (in full).