JOINT PLANNING COMMISSION/ CITY COUNCIL MEETING

MINUTES OF MEETING JUNE 21, 2007

CALL TO ORDER:

Chairman called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.

PLANNING COMMISSION MEMBERS PRESENT:

Alan Seymour, Pat Soller, Don Bergwall, Roger Yoder, Ken Kraus, Pete Griffin, John Cunningham.

CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT:

David Burke, Mark Reams, Leah Sellers, Dan Fogt, Ed Pleasant. John Gore- excused, John Marshall- came late.

OTHERS PRESENT:

Chris Schmenk, Kathy House, Greg DeLong

DISCUSSION:

Mr. Pleasant stated they would follow the agenda as listed. Mr. Seymour stated he would like to add that Planning Commission and City Council have interacted very well. City Council has responded to recommendations that we have forwarded to them. I think an open communication and recognition of their expectations of us and how we see their operation is important to us. There are things that sometimes come up that make us wonder how what the perception of city administration and council is. This type of forum gives us the opportunity to exchange some of those views and get a better feel for the direction of Marysville.

Comprehensive Plan (current): Make 1999 comprehensive plan official instead of unofficial

Mr. Seymour stated the commission talked at a special meeting about the comprehensive plan. We all understand that it needs to be updated. The view here, which could be not general, agreed by all, is that Marysville have a defined comprehensive plan. We all know that we have a comprehensive plan, I think. And it is the “think” that bothers me. We have been attached to the Union County comprehensive plan which was endorsed and embraced in 1999. But there is nothing out there that says this is Marysville’s plan as a stand alone.

Mr. Reams stated this does. He stated in resolution 599, which is a resolution adopting the 1999 comprehensive plan as the planning guide for the City of Marysville.

Mr. Seymour asked if everyone is comfortable being directly connected to the county plan. People stated the city was in 1999 because that is when they adopted it.

Mr. Seymour stated what Mr. Delong did was pull out all the information from the comprehensive plan and put it into an unofficial document. Mr. Seymour stated he wanted to open it up for discussion to see if it was worthy of discussion.

Mr. Pleasant stated Mr. Reams comments were added (“I talked to Alan Seymour a little bit about this meeting last night.  We had quite a bit of discussion on the objectives or "tasks" that are recommended in our comprehensive plan.  This seemed like a good point for discussion between our committees.
When our comprehensive plan was first adopted, Carl Coe was president of Council and also served on the Public Affairs Committee.  He had the committee review all the short-term (and possibly mid-term) tasks and assign them.  For example, some might have been assigned to Council, the Administration, or Planning Commission.  This kind of fell off the radar after he left Council.  I think it would be good to have a review of the recommendations from our comprehensive plan and the suggested timelines (short-term, mid-term, and long-term).  We may also want to have a review of the status of the items that are still to be completed.”) and they have to do with the tasks. With that I would want us to look at the action items in the plan that have not yet been implemented. He stated from Mrs. Sellers resolution, this plan is from 1999 are there things since then that are not included and need to be looked at.

Mr. Kraus stated his understanding was that Mr. DeLong passed out was the entire comprehensive plan. Mr. DeLong stated that was correct. He stated he did that because when he read through the plan, it was difficult to pull out just stuff on Marysville.

Mr. Kraus stated Mr. Reams comments are on point and need to be looked at, but perhaps something that is equally important is what is no longer appropriate because of growth. He stated in his experience in a growing community plans should be updated every 5 years and we are well past that. The only question in my mind is do we do a stand alone plan or dove tail with the county. He stated he leans towards something that is just the city.

Mr. Seymour stated he prefers to have an individual identity.

Mr. Cunningham stated he doesn’t find a lot of utility in the current plan. We need to have a functional, useable tool. He stated he thinks it’s been demonstrated tonight that yes, we adopted it, but of what use is it to us. As a member of planning commission it doesn’t give me what I need to help guide out decision making processes.

Question was asked as to what would help guide them. Mr. Cunningham stated more specific strategies. Something that is more specific to Marysville. It doesn’t help us when we make a decision as to whether something should be zoned something specific.

Mr. Reams stated the plan was adopted 8 years ago and as I talked about in my memo (see above); there were a list of tasks that needed to be done. Some of which would give us the detail that I believe you are looking for. There is also a land use plan and it has been adopted by the city and until we come up with something else I still see this as our official document as land use. I don’t disagree that we need to update this document. I think we are headed in the right path.

Mr. Pleasant stated with a lot of us not being here in 1999, could someone lead us through how the process took place.

Mr. Bergwall stated he wasn’t here in 1999 but the process is outlined in the early stage of the plan and is outlined in the document that the county development puts out. In the comprehensive plan it talks about the gathering and all of the processes they went through. As I read through this for the first time, I would challenge, is this comprehensive and is it up to date and what kind of tool is it. On the agenda item a is now a given, because we recognize that it was adopted. As you roll into the next item and look at the process for updating it making it a better tool for planning, we still need to know what the vision is for Marysville. There are a lot of tag lines such as “small town atmosphere with big city amenities”, there are a variety of items that lead you toward the vision, but I have never seen or heard what it is we really want to be. We almost have to look at our strengths, our weaknesses and what we hold dearly to us. Because when you look at the plan, it all depends on what we want to be.

Mr. Soller stated being new to the Planning Commission, I found this document to be very educational in finding out what the direction was. Besides a lot of the census information it seems like we were on track with the objectives that were laid out in it. We may want to overlay some of the strategic plan things such as adding connectivity, adding bike paths and parks. It seems that the land use plan is on track. The things that were thought about in 1999 are still the important items today. As far as updating the plan it may be only updating the census information and tweaking some of the objectives, but it seems like we are on track.

Mr. Kraus stated because he was here in 1999 he may be able to help the process a little bit. One of the most important aspects of the whole thing was that it was multiple public meetings with citizens present and it was broken down into small focus groups. Everyone had the chance to address the very question of what are the strengths and weaknesses of Marysville today, what to you see of Marysville in 10 years and what would you like to see. We received sheets upon sheets of comments from all of these people that were then consolidated and put into this. This is the most important part because it isn’t us sitting around saying this is what I think, it was comments from the citizens.

Mr. Pleasant asked if this was done by a vendor. Mr. Kraus stated it was done by an outside consultant and an outside engineering firm. That is the way I would recommend we precede with or without the county. If we team up with the county, I think the areas need to be separated out individually. The people's input is critical.

Mr. Pleasant asked Mr. DeLong if he has had contact with the county. Mr. DeLong stated he has mentioned it to the Chamber of Commerce. He stated the people he has talked with are in agreement that it needs to be updated.

Mr. Kraus stated an outside consultant can be much more neutral and objective. There is a lot of paperwork and behind the scenes work that goes into putting some of this together.

Mr. Pleasant stated if we go through this process, we want to make sure we don’t just go through the motions that there is some action behind the effort.

Mr. Kraus stated what Mr. Reams suggested as in where are we on these things may be the first steps.

Mr. Reams he thinks they should do that before we go through the process of updating to give us a better understanding of what was important 8-9 years ago and maybe it can help guide us as to where to go. Putting together a new comprehensive plan could take a year or a year and a half, but some of these things we should be doing now, we shouldn’t be waiting for this whole process to end.

Mr. Seymour stated the initial part of this thing is clear now. The next approach might be we talk about it and set an objective as to what the target date of completion should be.

Mr. Pleasant stated before we go with this, are we in agreement with the statement that was made down here; that we will pursue it, that we will look at updating tasks at this point. Is this a consensus?

Mr. Yoder stated for a clarification, first we want to review the list of the tasks that was made with the original plan and an evaluation of where the completion of the list is.

Mrs. Sellers stated she believes some of the work has been done. Eric Phillips went through the plan and e-mailed what still needed to be addressed.

Mr. Yoder stated the consensus is that we want to move forward with a new plan; whether that is independent or with the county. Then I would assume we would have to come up with a scope of the work that needs to be done. Then probably send out a RFQ.

Mr. Kraus stated that is when it becomes a budgetary item. Mr. Seymour stated that is letter e.

Mr. Marshall stated that is the question he has, whatever we are going to review, who is going to do it. Is it going to be an internal review, are we going to hire an outside consultant that council is going to have to approve expenditure for, what are we talking about?

Mr. Pleasant asked if he is talking about the review of the 1999 plan. Mr. Marshall stated he is trying to clarify it as to what was stated needs to be done.

Mr. Kraus stated as he sees what Mr. Reams has suggested, my first thought is to do it internally or a couple members of planning and council sit down and go through the report. Get it broken down to what still needs to be done is the first step. Mrs. Sellers stated she thinks that list already exists. Mr. Kraus stated if that list already exists then it is just a matter of getting it updated to today.

Mr. Cunningham stated to his earlier point, there are things that have been done that are not in the plan.

Mr. Yoder stated he thinks it would be a good foundation, since there are so many new people since 1999.

Mr. Kraus stated if we have that it goes a long way toward a future update. Maybe what we are looking at is updating the numbers, what new is being added to the plate, and what is the future Marysville service and what about land use.

Mr. Seymour stated what this results in is a scope of work to be done by the consulting operation.

Mr. Pleasant stated he doesn’t think they can put an ending date on the update until some of the initial stuff is done. He asked if it is a consensus of the group to proceed as it has been outlined here.

Mrs. Sellers stated we know by law that as a city we are required to update the land use portion of the plan within one year. We have guide post for six months of updates. My contemplation with the resolution was that it would be done internally; at least that piece of it. Because I see it as a priority item.

Mr. Marshall asked if that law was binding on administration. Mrs. Sellers stated it is binding on the city.

Mr. Marshall stated it is a resolution only.

Mrs. Sellers stated regardless we know we have deadlines for the land use portion of this and if our updating the entire plan gets in the way of meeting those deadlines done then I would have some concerns.

Mr. Marshall stated that is his point he is not sure who the resolution encumbers. As I recall the wording is specifically toward administration not council. In my interpretation of that we are not in that loop and it wouldn’t effect us.

Mr. Seymour stated if it would prove to be an overall requirement it could quickly be resolved by simply saying it is good as it is today and that in effect is an update.

Mr. Marshall asked if Mrs. Sellers had a copy of the resolution. Mrs. Sellers stated no, but she could tell him what is says because she wrote it. What it says is that administration will work with planning commission to complete an update of the land use portion of the comprehensive plan within a year of its passage and that council would work cooperatively with them.

Mr. Kraus stated he is reluctant to go very far with a land use plan without a lot of public meetings and citizen input. Mrs. Sellers stated she agrees. Mr. Kraus stated if you are going to do that then council has the authority to change the end date on the resolution so the whole package can be done.

Mr. Seymour stated there are a couple of ways to look at it and Mr. Kraus has a point, however, if it is a matter of quickly conforming to something that has not been conformed to in the past, we can simple adopt the present plan knowing we are going to proceed to update it anyway.

Mr. Sellers stated we know this is the adopted land use for the city. Mr. Seymour stated your portion about updating. What does updating mean? Does it mean that every year we look at it and say we like it the way it is?

Mrs. Sellers stated that may be the case. Our discussion has been general as to the entire comprehensive plan up until now. My point is that we already have a deadline in place for updating the land use piece. If that interferes with updating the entire comprehensive plan then we need to discuss that.

Mr. Cunningham stated his comment was that at a minimum we need to go in and reflect what the current usage is. It is not fully in tune with the land use plan that we are looking at.

Mr. Sellers stated the resolution also deals with the growth in service use area.

Mr. Kraus stated what Mrs. Sellers is suggesting is that in the list of the short term objectives that we focus on chapter 9, land use. At least that will tell us where we are.

Mr. Bergwall stated even when you do that, one of the items mention is that the plan calls for maximum residential population of 77,000. If you look at the land use it was to accommodate the full 77,000. Do you want the plan to end up resulting in your vision or do you want a vision to be put into the plan? If our vision is to say Marysville does not want to become more than 50,000, then the way we plan for land use would reflect differently than to just say we are going to be another town that is going to grow as it grows.

Mr. Reams stated he agrees, he thinks we need a vision and some direction as to what we are updating in the plan.

Mr. Marshall stated he is tired of trying to reinvent the wheel. We have so many examples around us that are very close to us which are examples of them doing development good and bad. Why do we not borrow and utilize what they have already learned instead of taking a block of granite and making it ourselves. Some people don’t like to hear it but Dublin is a good example of how to do it right.

Mr. Kraus stated they also have a planning staff of about 25 people.

Mr. Marshall stated what ever the case is they have done some really good things. Why do we not start there?

Mr. Bergwall stated he thinks that point is well taken. He stated he also hears so many people say that they don’t want to be Dublin.

Mr. Marshall stated that is fine, we don’t need to be Dublin. But let’s look and see what was their vision or lack there of and copy what was good, throw out what was bad and see how it fits into what we want this community to be. He stated we may not be able to become some of the things they are but we may be able to use the blueprint as a starting point.

Mrs. Sellers stated when you are talking about goal setting or visioning, which should be the first priority; you don’t need money for that do you?

Mr. Kraus stated his guess would be that Dublin would be happy to share copies of their plan and so would any of the other communities.

Mr. Marshall stated to him that would be the first step.

Mr. Griffin stated he has been doing a lot of traveling around central Ohio and will continue for the next several months. I am gradually getting an understanding of what is around us. Southern Delaware County is much unplanned. If you take Union County and its entities, we have a tremendous opportunity to become whatever we want to be. There is almost nothing here. As you go down the SR 42 and SR 33 corridor there are some very extensively planned communities that are going to be there before you know it. They are going to help define what Marysville is going to be.

Mr. Marshall stated something he heard today was that there may be a kink in the plan for the development south of SR 42. He stated he thinks the Mayor is working against them.

Mrs. Sellers asked what the kink was. Mr. Marshall stated apparently there is a deal being made. He asked Mrs. House if that was accurate. Mrs. House stated she knows there have been conversations, but she would disagree that the Mayor is working against them. It is totally inaccurate and I think you should talk to him before you make a public statement.

Mr. Marshall stated he would totally agree because he has only heard only one side of the story.

Mr. Griffin stated he believes Dublin is well planned, he is not sure he could say the same about Hilliard.

Mr. Kraus stated we should look at some of these other blueprints and adapt it to what we want.

Mr. DeLong stated you keep saying that want to adapt it, but adapt it to what. I still haven’t heard what this town wants to be.

Mr. Reams stated he thinks that is jumping ahead. We may get down to some of the tasks, like protect the corridor around streams and rivers, that is something that we can adapt from another community, but we still need to come up with a vision.

Mr. Cunningham stated the point again is that we need community input. We need to make sure we have the correct method of gathering the information and then how we utilize the information we receive is critical. You want the community to be engaged and be a part of this. All too often the community feels things are being done to them and opposed to the community doing something for themselves.

Mr. Kraus stated he thinks that was done with the last plan. There were additional meetings in which the people we showed what was drafted so far to make sure it was really on track with what they wanted.

Mr. Yoder stated so is it fair to say it is this groups responsibility to actually create a draft form of the vision and then is opened up to the pubic for input to utilize.

Mr. Pleasant asked if the group was ready to move onto item c.

Mr. Pleasant stated his understanding was that there was a committee to take charge of the vision and it was only partially done. Someone else did additional work which is what is before us now.

Mr. Reams stated we adopted a vision statement, but I don’t think the task was finished.

Mr. Pleasant asked who’s responsible for that, administration.

Mr. Seymour stated one of the questions that came up in one of our special meetings was what role does the planning commission play in the updating of the comprehensive plan.

Mr. Reams stated he thinks that the community having input is just as important as planning and council to buy into the plan. Maybe there is 10 % that we don’t individually agree with, but we should have a consensus that this is the direction that we want to go.

Mr. Seymour stated planning commission with it’s involvement with the developments needs to embrace and understand the comprehensive plan that we are supporting.

Mr. Kraus stated he would suggest, assuming there is a third party that will eventually be involved, that all members of planning and all members of council attend all public meetings to the extent possible and the role would be to listen only. We need to understand and hear what the people are saying. If we don’t hear it and just try to go off of notes we’ll miss a lot.

Mr. Reams stated he was going to suggest that there be a meeting with council and planning but it should come after what Mr. Kraus has just mentioned.

Mrs. Sellers asked Mr. DeLong if he has done comprehensive plans. Mr. DeLong stated he has worked on them but they have always had a third party involved. He stated he still thinks we need to give them a vision of what you want.

Mr. Seymour stated the process to get there (the end plan) needs to be outlined.

Mr. Kraus stated the first step may be to get a hold of the mission statement that was created and get an update of the goals.

Mr. Fogt stated the vision statement may have been adopted by council but the book has not been adopted.

Mrs. House stated when the idea of a retreat was suggested it was suggested to begin dialog about visioning. It took most of the weekend to get to the vision statement. From that the other piece that got done was to divide the council and administration into planning committees. We came back and the committees were assigned discussion topics. The committees met and made plans and gradually we got farther and farther from the retreat and less and less got done. Nothing got formalized. In December of 2006, I talked to the then president Gore and asked if it would be possible for staff since there was staff on all of the committees to bring all of their accounting from the committee work. From there then put it all together and talk about which areas it should go in. Not change the things that were talked about in the committees, just to put it in written form. That is what happened on the date on the front of the book.

Mr. Soller stated when he received the strategic plan, what the planning commission was unsure of was, is this a resolution. That is what spearheaded the meeting tonight. We have a lot of plans and we are not in alignment with these plans. From an action standpoint I would like to recommend that we have a third party to review all of the statistical information in the comprehensive plan. The clock is ticking on a lot of the items in the strategic plan and we need to know whether or not we need to get these things done.

Mr. Pleasant stated we have a lot of things out there; we need to start putting this in some kind of order. What can we agree on? Do we want to start with some kind of vision? Should council and administration get together and look at the vision? Should we set up a committee of two planning and two council to work with Eric Phillips and go over the list of the 1999 tasks?

Mr. Seymour stated what he has heard is that the process needs to begin. We agree that there needs to be a time table for the first leg of it. I think there needs to be a process for the first leg. The questions I have is how is it developed and who is to develop it.

Mr. Pleasant asked if the vision outlines the process. Mr. Seymour stated he thinks the vision is within the process. Mr. Kraus stated he thinks the vision is one of the steps.

Mr. Bergwall stated a vision could be developed as a result of the first step process. It could be as easy as all of the material we have and all of the references people have about the different communities but still looking at our community. We are in Marysville; you start by looking at what are the givens. Then look at them and decide if they are a strength or a weakness. From there your vision develops.

Mr. Reams stated what he is hearing is that when we had the meeting last year and developed a vision statement with the administration. We did not get finished with everything we needed to that weekend. Our next step was to identify strengths and strategies. What we were going to do next is what we are saying needs to be done. Maybe we can bring them back to help finish the process.

Mr. Fogt asked Mr. DeLong how detailed he thought the vision statement should be.

Mr. DeLong stated it should be broad; it is the plan and objectives that need to be detailed.

Mrs. Sellers asked what Mr. DeLong’s experience is in helping with the comprehensive plans and the first steps that need to be done.

Mr. DeLong stated he has done it before. He stated when we all took our jobs and the council reps ran for election, you knew what you wanted to do and it is time for everyone to speak up and start doing it.

Mrs. Sellers asked why we would hire someone to help with this if we have a planner on board.

Mr. Reams stated he would rather have the planners input on how to do this rather than have them facilitate the meeting. When you facilitate the meeting you almost have to remain bias.

Mr. DeLong stated he would like to get the chamber involved since they are the city’s economic development. I am not sure how they are marketing the city.

Mrs. Sellers stated if she had to decide where to spend the money in this process, I think Mr. Marshall’s point about the community input and getting the information that communication effort is going to be an expensive part of the process. I would hate to spend a lot of money for us to figure out what we want for the city. As Mr. DeLong pointed out if we didn’t have a vision when we ran for election, then we have some problems.

Mr. Cunningham stated the first steps to this are usually “canned”. There have to be a number of communities that have already gone through these steps. We shouldn’t have to pay for a consultant for this.

Mr. Reams stated all of the members of planning commission, council and administration have very strong opinions. We need someone else lead the activity and keep us moving.

Mr. Seymour stated he agrees.

Mr. Soller stated he doesn’t think the comprehensive plan needs to be updated that much. The short term goals in the plan are listed from 1998- 2003, the mid-term is 2004-2010, long term is 2011-2018. This was a very thorough comprehensive plan that is supposed to take us out another 9 years. When I look at the goals and visioning that is in here, I don’t see the city wanting to change many of them. The main thing I see changing is the numbers. And that is what we should spend money on a consultant for. Mr. DeLong doesn’t have the capacity to do all the census stuff. That is where we should invest the money.

Mr. Reams stated we have two tasks. One is to go through the plan and identify the things that have been done or have been started. There may be a handful of items that we may say let’s have these items looked at. Then there is the other task of what are we missing and where do we want to go. That is where the visioning will come into play.

Mr. Cunningham stated a lot of the information in the comprehensive is just from a text book and plugged into our plan. What we need to do is take the information and apply it to our community.

Mr. Soller stated that is where he sees the strategic plan coming into place, as the task list.

Mr. Fogt stated he agrees with Mr. Marshall and Mrs. Sellers and instead of hiring someone from outside of the community I think there is someone that has retired from a company that lives in the community that would do this for a small fee.

Mr. Pleasant stated he is hearing two things; the first is to look at the next step of the strategic plan. We need to look at someone local and low cost to help us with that. Also, we need to look at time tables, strengths and weakness. The second is to look at the comprehensive and identify the tasks that have been completed and those that have not, additional ones that are missing.

Mr. Reams stated he thinks to identify what is missing you have to finish the first one.

Mr. Sellers stated she would like to limit the scope a little more. She stated she was on the committee that disbanded regarding the Jerome Twp. talks. The task was to review the comprehensive plan, just the land use plan and transportation. The thought there was that the utilities were already covered. She stated the comments Mr. Soller made were good pertaining to the area inside the city limits. Can we focus on just land use as a committee?

Mr. Seymour stated he agrees with the urgency of the land use plan, because that is something that planning commission faces with the plans that come before us.

Mr. Cunningham stated he thinks it is hard to talk about land use with out talking about transportation.

Mrs. Sellers asked Mr. DeLong if he thought it was a bad idea to focus on land use with out focusing on the transportation aspect.

Mr. DeLong stated his concern is that when it come down to the city and staff doing this and we are going outside of our boundaries the perception of the township on this. We are going to look like we are trying to take over. We are going to have to have public hearings on their end and we are going to have a plan that is not enforceable on our end because it is out of our jurisdiction.

Mr. Kraus stated the first step may be what is our growth area.

Mrs. Sellers stated back to the question is everyone comfortable with focusing on just the land use portion now.

Mr. Kraus stated he thinks that is fine as long as it is kept in mind that some things may change as we go through the rest of the process.

Mr. Seymour stated he can see them simultaneous.

Mr. Pleasant stated with item e, as we progress we need to make sure when the budget comes around that if there are items that we need funds for it is looked at.

Mr. Pleasant stated in item d, what did you want from them.

Mr. Seymour stated they are open items for discussion. With the HOA’s, the goal is for the city administration to have a controlling tool, where each HOA has to provided a minimum to the city and each year it has to be updated with who the officers are. We are faced with this with every development that comes in.

Mr. Pleasant asked what the commission would be requesting.

Mr. Seymour stated Mr. Bergwall has been working on putting a proposal together. It would require someone in the city to manage this.

Mr. Bergwall stated this chapter basically states that if you are going to have a development and have common areas, you must have a HOA. The HOA must meet at least annually, must have officers and must report their meeting and officers names and officers to the city annually. There were also provisions that if they don’t address issues within 30 days the city will go in and fix it and charge all of the property owners for it.

Mr. Marshall stated his question is have we looked at what other communities have done. Mr. Bergwall stated he contacted a number of communities and then took pieces from them to create what I have. I also got a HOA book. Columbus has a book with community guidelines and so I got some information from there.

Mr. Marshall stated he has also researched the community thing too. My take on that is it applied to areas that were not encompassed in a HOA. We have to give the administration some tool to work with.

Mr. Bergwall stated he has forwarded the draft HOA language to the City Law Director several months ago but has not heard back from him.

Mr. Seymour stated this has to be embraced by the city administration because they are the ones that have to administer it.

Mr. Pleasant stated as far as the last item, traffic flow. Mr. Seymour stated in the comprehensive plan it showed internal city road links. He stated as plans come to planning commission we have to take the links into consideration. The only way these links are going to get made is with development. We hope we have the support of the city administration, that when developments come in they abide by the adopted plan.

Mr. Reams asked Mr. DeLong if he had ever been in a city that has their own traffic engineer that does traffic studies for future developments or that reviews the traffic studies submitted by developers.

Mr. DeLong stated it depends on how large the study is and how much stuff they have.

Mr. Yoder stated just to give you some information about a recent conflict that came up. The study says there needs to be an east west connector across town. Among planning commission we need some guidance as to where the connector is to be.

Mr. Cunningham stated that was his point from the beginning. If we had a good comprehensive plan, these questions would be answered. It needs to be specific.

Mr. Seymour stated telling developers they need to put in a thoroughfare with a divider and they can’t have drives coming onto that road, you are going to have a lot of complaints because that eats into their bottom line.

Mr. Marshall asked what do we owe the developer. This is our town. You are going to come in here make your money and go on down the road and leave us with maintaining this mess.

Mr. Bergwall stated if the plan is laid out, then it would show what the value of the property is.

Mr. Griffin stated he wants to go back to the visioning. I don’t see how we can do any planning with the areas outside of Marysville without having real interaction with the other communities. Mrs. Sellers stated we are working on getting with them. Mr. Griffin stated what about the areas going east on SR 36.

Mr. Seymour stated on the traffic item, we would just like to make everyone aware of the challenges we have.

Mr. Pleasant stated his charge is to get with administration on the strategic plan and start to focus on the land use. After the vision then we need to look at the tasks of the comprehensive plan.

Mr. Kraus stated that could be simultaneously.

Mr. Pleasant stated in regards to the task list, is it appropriate to get a couple members of council and a couple members of planning commission to get the list and examine it. Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Kraus, Mrs. Sellers and Mr. Reams volunteered. Mrs. House stated she would like to have Mr. DeLong in on it as well.

Mr. Pleasant stated he would take the lead on the other part.

Mr. Cunningham stated he would like to see the planning commission set up on city e-mail addresses.

INDIVIDUAL COMMENTS:

Mr. Kraus stated he thinks it was a good meeting and thinks this type of meeting should happen at least twice a year.

Mr. Cunningham stated he knows it cost a lot but he is disappointed that we can not attach a full blown comprehensive plan.

Mr. Reams stated he thinks that is were we are headed.

Mr. Soller stated since the budget is being reviewed now; this needs to be taken into consideration now. He stated his understanding on the strategic plan is that the time line is not binding.

Mr. Pleasant stated he appreciates the meeting tonight and thinks it went very well.

ADJOURNMENT:

Meeting adjourned.