PLANNING
COMMISSION SPECIAL MEETING
MINUTES OF MEETING JANUARY 18, 2007
CALL TO ORDER:
Chairman called the meeting to order at
6:30 p.m.
PLANNING COMMISSION MEMBERS PRESENT:
John Cunningham, Don Bergwall, Patrick
Soller, Ken Kraus, Pete Griffin, Alan Seymour.
Roger Yoder– absent.
OTHERS PRESENT:
Greg DeLong, Brian Palmer
CITIZEN
COMMENTS - None
DISCUSSION ITEMS:
Mr. Cunningham
stated the main focus of tonight’s meeting is to once again go through the To
Do List, reassessing it and then talking about priorities. We have made progress. One of the things I wanted to start out with
tonight was regarding the e-mail I copied everyone on that was sent to Mr.
DeLong. Mr. DeLong and Mr. Palmer are
both additional resources that we are able to utilize. I asked Mr. DeLong, as City Planner, if he
could give some insight as to his background and perhaps some things he has
observed coming into Marysville. I made
a snide comment that we haven’t seen his resume and we are not putting it
against him. You were hired and there are seven people here who spend hours and
hours of planning in the city and we didn’t even get the courtesy of knowing
who you were, where you were coming from and what you
have done. It is a little upsetting to
me, but we’ll deal with that. If you
could, give us what you are thinking and we would even welcome you comments on
where we are headed and what we are trying to do from your prospective.
Mr. DeLong
stated he has worked a lot with cities and townships. In doing visioning and a comprehensive plan,
to say I’ve done one, I can honestly say I have not. It is very rare that you will find a City
Planner that has done them, unless you are in a city like
Mr. Cunningham stated he is interested in Mr. DeLong’s skill set
as well. Mr. DeLong stated he has done a
lot with zoning in the past. Mr.
Bergwall asked who for. Mr. DeLong
stated he has done a lot of code changes.
He stated he worked with the City of
Mr. DeLong
stated he wrote Planned Developments in the past, working with developers on
the layout of their site plans. These
are the things I brought to the table along with my township experience.
Mr. Seymour
asked if there were 4 or 5 major tasks and a certain time devoted to each, what
would that breakdown be. Mr. DeLong
stated he thinks the first thing that needs to be addressed is the zoning code.
Mr. Griffin
asked in what way. Mr. DeLong stated
there are a lot of simple changes to be made that could enhance the city. Some of the first things I noticed coming
into this town where signs, people parking their cars in the yards and gravel
driveways. I know people say it is the
character of the community, but as an outsider driving in I wondered if this
place was moving forward at all. On the
eastside of town, where all of the development going on, it is a totally
different environment that the rest of the city. Code changes would be important. They are the things you are going to see the
immediate impact on. As more and more
people are coming here, these are going to be the things they are going to look
at. You can plan and vision all you want
but you may not see the results of that for another 20 years. I have also been working really close with
the Chamber of Commerce. We have a
comprehensive plan that was adopted in 1999 and no one is sitting down and
going through it. There are items that
it says need to be done and there is no one doing
them. He stated Joe Clase and I are
going to work together on the existing comprehensive plan and see what we can
do to get some of this stuff moving forward.
Mr. Seymour
asked what were you given from the administration as
far as your job description or target goals.
Mr. DeLong stated one was working on the comprehensive plan and getting
it updated and another was working on the zoning code. I think they were also looking for someone to
help with the plans. We have developers
walking in the door and no one to really review the plans with.
Mr. Seymour
asked if he saw himself as a second link to a development. Mr. DeLong stated he should be at the
beginning, and we have been doing that since my arrival. We have people coming in with projects for
Coleman’s Crossing and we are right there at the
start.
Mr. Kraus stated
if he was in the administrator position today, a lot of the stuff that I was
doing as far as looking at plats, I would defer to the city planner.
Mr. Griffin stated the way the code is written, it is the whole
idea to have the developers come to a central place, and you are really the
central place. Then you gather all of
the other forces together so they have a chance to review.
Mr. Bergwall
stated there was some disconnects and confusion because it was a free lance on
individual opinions from whoever they would deal with in the administration and
didn’t necessarily reflect the collective thoughts that we had as a planning
body.
Mr. Griffin
stated he doesn’t think that was hard to see with even more recently, Myron Gallogly’s project.
Mr. Cunningham
stated on that project, he talks to administration and gets an opinion and then
comes before planning commission and gets a different opinion. It’s almost like your starting over. Sometimes they are sitting there saying, the
city just told us we could do this and now you are saying you don’t like
it. Then of course we say no, because
we’ve never seen it before.
Mr. Bergwall
stated it has worked that way in the past but if we had a clear vision that we
communicated and we had a solid code then a lot of that would disappear.
Mr. DeLong
stated that is what he is. I take what
you are looking for back to the developers so they know what to expect.
Mr. Kraus stated
what is going to happen now is he will be looking at it and saying as a plan
does this make sense. As he sits in more
of our meetings and understands the kinds of questions we are going to have, he
will be able to do a better job than we’ve ever had in the past of the
preliminary meeting. So when they do
come to us for the first time, there is going to be a lot less
disconnection.
Mr. DeLong stated
this takes time to develop. Even when I
worked for
Mr. Kraus stated
he thinks that Mr. DeLong is right on with visioning and updating the
comprehensive plan. There is no way the
city is going to be able to do it without outside help. The second comment is on the visioning. It goes way beyond on what Mr. DeLong or any
of us foresee. We have to get the people
involved. We will have to have some
public meetings.
Mr. DeLong
stated we need to coincide with what the Chamber might be doing for the entire
county. It wouldn’t make sense if we do
our own thing and they do theirs and they are overlapping and are not thinking
the same way.
Mr. Cunningham stated at the last council meeting Mr. Pleasant was
elected president and Mr. Burke was elected vice-president. Not saying anything negative about past
presidents or vice’s but now we have a fresh opportunity in front of us. In the past year in working with the council
they have asked the planning commission to come in the second meeting of every
month and make a report to them. It is
the next meeting. I would like to make
my presentation to them more of a formalized about what we are doing and what
we are thinking. I have said several
times about wanting to have a more user friendly plan for us to have access
to. I caught glimmers that perhaps
council and administration would support a comprehensive plan. Whether it be a new one or
to meld the current plan in to a workable plan. I am thinking we are going to need outside
help to make that happen. I would at
least like to walk out of here tonight with at least a skeleton of what we
would like to do and make the presentation to council. I would like to present it to them that this
is not what John Cunningham is thinking but pass resolution this evening that
says planning commission as a body would like to recommend to city council that
we pursue this in earnest and that we work together to identify the resources
to make this happen. We have been marching
for a long time and I think we’ve done a decent job with duct tape and bailing
wire to get where we are at. We really
need to bring real tools, real mechanics to bear on this community to make it
grow into what we really see it being.
Mr. Kraus stated
he is a firm believer that the city needs its own comprehensive plan, with or
without the county. The county in my
mind is a player, but is irrelevant. We
have to look at the city and where the city is going. If it happens to dove tail with something the
county is doing, as long as it is timely, that’s fine. But we need our own plan that deals with land
use, potential land use and all the other things that go along with it. We have traffic studies all over the place. Someone needs to pull them together and see
what areas we need to fill in. Even if
we take off and update our code it is going to have to be done again because
the biggest enforcement of the land use portion of the comprehensive plan is
the zoning code and the subdivision regulations. When it is done, which may take a couple of
years, we may be back and updating code again.
It is long and tedious but it needs to be done.
Mr. Bergwall stated he agrees with Mr. Kraus that we need a city
plan. In starting that, what many groups
tend to do, be it a comprehensive plan like this or a five year plan, a lot of
it becomes the fashionable thing to do.
So you end up with volumes of information and it get put up on a shelf,
and no one pays attention to it, and you go about going your way. Because you really don’t have commitment and
understanding and I think in order to sell the concept you first need to
articulate the value and purpose of this.
What we want are tools, but what is it we are working on with those
tools and what are we going to build when we are all done. So in order to talk about a plan for
Marysville you have to identify some goals or end results that we hope to
achieve that people could recognize as it being a problem today. If you can get that down, and what it is we
want to be in the end. To some extent we
have to identify ourselves and then say this is what we want to achieve and
then build a plan around that.
Mr. Cunningham
stated when I say a plan, and we brought up the comprehensive plan, my
challenge is, to say okay we have that plan.
Looking at that plan you tell me what we need to do in the next three
years and at then end of the three years where are we going to be.
Mr. Seymour
stated Mr. Cunningham’s questions is can you derive what a plan is from the
1999 comprehensive plan. It tells you
where some designated areas are but doesn’t get you anywhere. That follows Mr. Kraus’s point of a
comprehensive plan for Marysville which means every area in detail.
Mr. Kraus stated
no. He stated he believes Mr. Seymour
and himself have different visions of that.
A comprehensive plan when it gets into land uses is not going to get
specific on the zoning districts.
Mr. Seymour
stated he thinks that is where it needs to be.
Otherwise you are still broad based.
Mr. Kraus stated
that is right and that is where your citizen input in the different things that
need to be in different areas comes into play.
Mr. Seymour
stated citizen input is needed at some point.
Mr. Kraus stated early. Mr.
Griffin stated not as early as you might think.
Mr. Seymour stated if you do that then you are designing a city by
committee.
Mr. Griffin
stated we as a group need to begin to think through our minds on how we
envision where we are headed, area by area, if you want to do it that way. Once you have some thoughts firmly in your
mind that you can talk about, then you can go to the individual areas and
invite them in. But you don’t do that
until you have a concrete idea.
Mr. Kraus stated
he agrees except for one thing. If you
use what is in the 1999 version, this is what it says,
you people live in this area. What do
you like, what don’t you like, what would you like to see improved. Your base is what is out there now.
Mr. Cunningham
stated there are people out there that may say this is the best plan in the
world and the salvation to the community, but don’t do it in my back yard. Someone has to make the call. I understand we need the input, but we have
to make the determination of what is in the best interest of everybody. Mr. Kraus stated that is where our job comes
in.
Mr. Bergwall
stated he thinks it is in between. He
stated he has talked to Bruce Daniels and Bruce is someone we should include in
this input somewhere along the way. He
is a visionary leader and offers a lot.
I think before you bring people in you need to have some things established
as the givens. We have people we would
like to approach and get input and they would say we don’t want to grow. Well the fact is we are going to grow. So we might just as well have some of this
information as a given.
Mr. Soller
stated his concern is whether we are the cart or the horse right now. It seems like the administration is going out
and marketing Marysville, but we haven’t really gone out and said these are the
areas you should market. Because we have
developed for this area, this is the area you should be looking at. The administration is going out with a
marketing plan, but what are they marketing.
They have not asked us for input.
I think it would be good to get from Council what they expect from us. Are they looking for us to just be
reactionary?
Mr. Kraus stated
his guess would be that what they are marketing would be any areas that are
marked on the zoning map that shows commercial or industrial areas. Industrial Parkway, Coleman’s Crossing and possibly the Cook property between SR 4 and SR
31 and that would be about the only properties I think they would be
marketing.
Mr. Cunningham
stated in those examples, I know they are marketing, but it appears to me that
they are marketing after the fact.
Coleman’s Crossing was not a city driven concept. We are being reactionary.
Mr. Soller asked
should we develop a plan that is in more detail than the current land use plan
we have now. Is it going to be the best
use of our efforts?
Mr. Seymour
stated his view of Marysville is that the east side markets itself. The north side does somewhat too. The west side doesn’t have much of a
vision. Well roundedness for the
community, something for all four sides is what I see as something we should
target. State Route 36 toward
Mr. Soller
stated he agrees but we also need to be in line with the administration. If we think the Cook property is a good place
for retail but they go to the Mayor and he doesn’t think so and they come to
him three times, it is never going to get to us.
Mr. Seymour
stated in response to that, our role as planning commission is to provide a
proposal and then gain alignment with adjustments.
Mr. Bergwall stated he agreed. If you have the plan and the documentation as
to why the land is zoned the way it is and you get it approved then you have a
solid base to draw from.
We are not doing
our job with providing the city administration with the guidance as to where to
go.
Mr. DeLong
stated a question he has is, you keep talking about zoning, do
you want the Comprehensive plan that detailed?
Where you actually specify what properties have what zoning.
Mr. Kraus stated
he doesn’t think you can. Mr. DeLong
stated you don’t want to do that. A
comprehensive plan is exactly what is shown in the 1999 plan. You may have someone walk in with a great
plan and they want to put it in a certain spot and the zoning in your
comprehensive plan tells them no, they can’t put it there. Are you going to turn it away? Mr. Seymour stated probably not. We would have to assess what they have to
offer.
Mr. Kraus stated
that is why you make the plan generic.
Mr. DeLong stated if you accept that then you are going against a plan
you just adopted.
Mr. Cunningham
stated this information needs to be put in the narrative part of the
comprehensive plan. Right now we say in
a number of places in our code that our obligation as planning commission is to
follow the comprehensive plan. People
will come in with that plan and say, this is what is supposed to be there.
Mr. Kraus stated
he is not a land use lawyer but if we get too detailed on the land use map and
then try to change because something better shows up, we could find ourselves
in the middle of a lawsuit for the very reason that our code says we will
follow the plan and this change is not what the plan says.
Mr. Griffin
asked if when you say generic, are you comfortable with the plan saying this is
a commercial area vs. a residential. Mr.
Kraus stated yes, that is all the farther you should go. Mr. Griffin stated that is where he is too. We need to put something out there that says
this is the direction we are going.
Mr. Cunningham
asked if we could ask MORPC to provide us with a presentation.
Mr. DeLong
stated MORPC did do a regional connection plan, which includes a seven county
plan that states growth information.
Mr. Cunningham
stated it doesn’t have to be MORPC, but we need someone to come in and talk to
us and administration about the value and the process of a comprehensive plan.
Mr. Soller asked how the comprehensive plan differs from the
economic development plan. He stated it
has land use in it as well.
Mr. Seymour
stated we have a comprehensive plan and an economic plan, we have plans in
place. We need to define what we want
that is different. We need to be
specific.
Mr. Griffin
stated he is thinking it may be premature for planning to go to council’s next
meeting and spell out exactly what we are doing. As I see we have a number of plans here and I
would suggest we gather all of them and we meet and go through them and try to
understand what each plan brings then we need to pick out the things we think
are important to us. Then we can go to
council and say this is the direction we are working in and see if we can get a
sense of what we need.
Mr. Kraus stated
Mr. Seymour is right, a plan is not any good if it doesn’t say in order to
accomplish or implement the plan you have to do certain things.
Mr. Cunningham
stated when the administration and city took their trip for the strategic
planning session; I know they discussed the comprehensive plan for the
city. Again, they did it without
us. Mrs. Seller’s is at the forefront of
this and they have something in mind and I am getting upset that we have no
idea what they are thinking.
Mr. Soller asked
how we insert ourselves into that.
Mr. Seymour
stated council has kind of made it clear that they want more involvement,
insight, more decision making in some of this activity.
Mr. Kraus stated
Mr. Griffin’s suggestion of getting all of the plans together and looking at
what we have, then taking it from there.
Mr. Seymour
stated what we more forward with is all the hotspots we have in front of us
right now, the things on our To Do List.
Mr. Cunningham
stated with some of the things on our list, I wonder if it is our best use of
time for some of these things. He stated
we need to look at additional ways to obtain some of these goals, buy
maximizing the resources we do have.
Mr. Bergwall
stated he would contend that we are making some of this too hard. We are trying to be so inclusive and get
everything covered that we have nothing.
For example what the Fire Chief proposed and what I drafted, I think is
a good first step. We should go ahead
and implement it and if we find there is a problem then we update. I am concerned that this group is vulnerable
for some problem coming up and them saying you knew this was a hazard over a
year ago and you didn’t do anything about it.
Mr. Cunningham stated one of the problems is the legislation you drafted
needs to be run by legal council.
Mr. Bergwall
stated with the HOA on the To Do List, we have a draft, let’s at least read,
tweak and if we don’t like it I work on the changes.
Mr. Cunningham
stated with the HOA, is it going to be worth our effort to do it. Is it going to hold up in the code? If not why waste our time, we have other
things to do.
Mr. Bergwall
stated he agrees it needs to be run through legal. However, some of the consultants in the
seminars, I don’t see the value.
Discussion held
regarding the mobile home regulations.
Mr. Kraus stated
in looking at the To Do List, I think we take councilman Reams memo off the
list and put it as something to be dealt with if and when we review the entire
code. Historic District Zoning, we tabled it at the last meeting and still needs to
be looked. He stated he understands
where Mr. Bergwall is coming from but I think we need to drop the whole
thing. Mr. Cunningham stated the statute
does indicate, and if we do nothing else but bring the language up to current
terms, because we are obligated to review the entire code every five
years.
Mr. Kraus stated
because you are talking terminology, it could fall under the category of an
entire code review.
Mr. Bergwall
stated the issue on the mobile homes and if you want to drop it, I would like
to put it on an agenda of a regular meeting and lets document it in minutes why
we are not addressing it or why we don’t have the ability to address it, so if
something comes up down the road, we’ve at least taken action on it.
Mr. Kraus stated
he doesn’t have a problem with that, he thinks it is a good idea.
Mr. Cunningham
asked why we don’t draft a letter to Tony Core asking them to look at it.
Mr. Seymour
stated in regards to the Home Owner’s Association language, we have never had
anyone strike us down on legislation that we’ve presented to council. If we look at this and create logical
legislation, reached alignment with city administrations and move it forward, I
think we would have success.
Mr. Kraus stated
he agrees, we just need to make sure we can legally do
it. Mr. Bergwall stated he doesn’t
understand were the legal concern is.
Mr. Kraus stated we have to find out if it is something that falls under
the purview of the subdivision regulations.
Mr. Cunningham
stated the legal question is the enforceability of the HOA rules on the people
who live there. This is one I am willing
to take a look at and send it to council.
Mr. Kraus stated
the commercial/ industrial subdivision signage is already going through
council. The SR 736/SR38 triangle piece
of property, the appropriate zoning is AR; take this item off of the list. He stated the POD’s;
Mr. Yoder has been working on language and has some questions. We should leave that on the list for
now. Visioning, we might want to
consider changing that to the beginning of figuring out what we want to do with
the existing plans and how we want to proceed.
The commission decided to call it reassessment of the comprehensive
plan. Mr. Kraus stated the next item is
the 1000 ft between intersection and the cul-de-sacs, I think can be dropped
off of the list.
Mr. Griffin
stated we also need to tell them since we don’t have a lot of developments
coming forth to us now; this is a good time for us to put our efforts forth in
the planning aspect.
Mr. Soller
stated this go back to what I said before, are we the cart or the horse. If we are going to be the planning
commission, we should have a plan in place to tell council here is what we are
going to utilize. We are not being
proactive in telling council and administrative what the plan is. We should be creating the plan, but what I
hear is we are letting someone else create the plan and we want a copy of
it.
Mr. Palmer
stated on the Cook property, the administration is not against that property
being developed, they are against it being developed right now. Another area that surprised me was the piece
of property adjacent to Coleman’s Crossing, it is zoned manufacturing and the
chamber is marketing it as such. Then
there was someone who came in and wanted to expand the commercial aspect of
Coleman’s Crossing.
Mr. Seymour
stated the function of this Planning Commission was simply to listen to
developers and vote on their projects and go home. It has expanded and we’ve taken a proactive
measure. If council sees us as simply
just approving plans, then that takes us back to where we began.
Mr. Cunningham stated
he knows council talks the talk, that they won’t do anything with this code
unless we initiate. That is not the only
way it can be done, but it is the policy they have adopted.
Mr. Kraus stated
on our next regular meeting we need to strip this list, so it is at a public
meeting and it is on record.
Mr. Kraus stated from what he has been hearing our list has come
down to a couple of major things. One is
to get a handle on what plans we’ve got so we can start understanding what a
comprehensive plan is and how it benefits us.
The second item is we need to review the code.
Mr. Cunningham
stated from a personal note he would like to make sure the next chair continues
to communicate to council the strong desire to work with them, and that it is
cause for great concern for us that they are not including us in the
discussions they are having on the comprehensive plan.
Mr. Kraus stated
what we need to add to the next meeting agenda is to formally review our To Do
List.
Mr. DeLong
stated he just wants to remind the planning members that ODNR will be at the
council meeting on the 25th and he encourages the members to attend.
ADJOURNMENT:
Meeting was adjourned.