Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We'll move on to number four, public appearances, public's opportunity to speak. We don't have anyone in the room, but if there's anyone on Zoom that would like to give public comments. I see no one. So we're gonna move on to number five, which is discuss and consider the minutes from the planning commission meeting on July 15th, 2026.

Motion to approve is presented.

Second. Motion by Alex, second by Heidi. Any other discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. Number six, continued discussion of potential ordinance amendment related to the use of bird safety glazing in future buildings. We've had presentations on this and some discussion at past meetings. And the direction from the previous meeting was to maybe have a little bit more information about the impact to developers by incorporating an ordinance like this into our code. Turn it over to Aaron.

Thanks. So as I think I mentioned last time, we're going to pick a local example of a recently built building in the village and kind of take a look at how this ordinance would have affected that. So this is First Choice Dental. The areas highlighted in red are areas that would be subject to the ordinance because they're more than 50 square feet. So as far as what that would be likely to cost, let me find my notes here. The estimates on the cost of the kind of storefront glazing per square foot vary quite a bit from about 50 to $150 a square foot. Splitting the difference and calling it 100, this would be about $56,000 worth of storefront glass. The bird glazing tends to be two to four times the cost of regular glass, kind of depending what you do. The lower end, it's like an etched design that the birds can see. The higher end, it's more of a UV thing that there's a pattern that the birds can see, but people can't. SO IF WE'RE ASSUMING IT'S TWICE THE AMOUNT, THAT'S AN EXTRA, YOU KNOW, ROUGHLY $60,000. YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO REPLACE ALL OF IT PER THE ORDINANCE, JUST .85 OR 85%. SO ABOUT AN EXTRA $50,000 ON THE PROJECT PER THE BUILDING PERMIT. THIS WAS A LITTLE OVER A MILLION DOLLAR PROJECT IN TOTAL, SO IT'S ADDING ABOUT 5% TO THE COST OF THE BUILDING IN THIS EXAMPLE. However, that's also not the only way to meet the ordinance is to put the bird glass in. For one thing, this building was 10,013 square feet. The ordinance is for buildings 10,000 square feet and over. So in this case, if they could have trimmed 14 square feet out of the building, they wouldn't have had to meet the ordinance at all. They can also do things with the, design of the glazing to break down the total the size of the area. So if there's a mullion that's more than six inches, then that separates it into two different areas. So in this case where it was one larger piece of glass because it used two inch mullions in the actual building. And here if they made this cross mullion six inches, then it's a 30 foot and a 42 foot square foot area. and they would not have to put the bird glass in this area. I think it would still have benefits for the birds because the larger mullion helps break up the space, but that's another way to kind of manipulate the design of the building to meet the ordinance. I guess it's kind of subjective whether 5% is too much to be adding onto buildings for this. To me, I guess it's not a significant amount, especially when there's other ways to kind of manipulate the design and if you know going in that this is on our books and this is what you would need to do then you can kind of plan ahead and break up these glass areas a little bit more.

Which maybe accomplishes the goal by having an ordinance on the books that they would change they would work around either putting bird safe glass up or they would modify their design which then also accomplishes some of the same objectives. Questions, comments, discussion? You pushed the button first.

Go ahead, Alex.

I think I said it before. I mean, I like the idea. The whole purpose is good. I don't like creating an ordinance that compels the construction technique where it doesn't exactly, you know, it doesn't revolve around public safety. I don't know that we have anything around this. I think we want to, we do the right things, protect the environment. I think that's all part of that, the stormwaters. Strong recommendations during design phase. I think a lot of that, we talk about aesthetics and different things that we want to see and that we do now. And I think we can add this part to that conversation. The other thing I kind of think about is like continued maintenance. So like your window gets replaced and it doesn't have it or if a current business replaces a window, do they need to do it? So like this sort of after the fact. maintenance and enforcement just really kind of gets a little ugly there, or well, it gets sticky, because we just don't have the staff for that. A lot of times we put stuff together and we don't have code enforcement and we're a good community that we, you know, we have good developers that follow our guidance already. I like it, I just don't, I'm not in favor of just the ordinance aspect of it. Everything else sounds really good, though. I think there is, you know, the cranes walk by the house, all this stuff is happening in this residential environment that I don't think would have occurred if there wasn't good stewardship. And I think this contributes to that. I just, I'm nervous on the ordinance, of the strict ordinance side of it. Thanks.

I align very strongly with Alex's statements there. I think enforcing it through ordinances is not the way for us to approach it. A 5% increase on a million dollar building, that's approaching a material difference in the cost. And while we're looking to attract businesses into the village, I don't think this helps us with that goal, and I think is vital to the long-term growth of our village. And saving birds is a very noble cause, but I don't think that helps us get to where we need to be as a community. I think I would be in support of more voluntary options and encouraging businesses to adopt these practices. But I would not, I think, at this time, support an ordinance for that purpose.

Thanks. I guess my question is for Erin. Are there places that have more of a voluntary type of incentive for these kinds of, I mean like a lead, do municipalities, is this part of any lead designation or are there like outside organizations that endorse or something that we, we could endorse as like... Yeah, I mean, if it's...

You know, one area where we would have more control is if it's something in a TIF district and they're asking for an incentive, that's something we could link to an increased incentive. You know, we could have some kind of information packet or something when someone applies for a site plan that these are best practices, but they're not necessarily in an ordinance. Yeah, I mean, there's different ways we can go about it.

It's like we have like a light ordinance that you can't spill out, but then there's also dark skylights. Is that part of our ordinance or requirements?

Yeah, the fixtures can't shine up.

But that's also for the neighbors in addition to the environment is kind of a two-fold. Okay, thank you.

Any other discussion?

I guess I agree with John and Alex. John said it very well.

So I think the commission, what I'm hearing, is not in favor of developing an ordinance, but perhaps in favor of some educational or some outreach. We can obviously build out our website. You can provide developers with information. And I know the South Central Bird Alliance can help with a lot of those resources, too. I think that's a way we could go.

Maybe just one more idea to throw out there. I can't remember the young lady's name who brought this. Allie, thank you. Perhaps something if businesses choose to voluntarily adopt these practices, the village could perhaps recognize them with the alley you know bird champion and they can hang a nice plaque i would be fully in support of something like that where it's voluntary and we're still recognizing the important work that she's doing because being good stewards of our environment is incredibly important and i don't want to dismiss the hard work that she put into it so if that's going to consider something like that i would i would support that wholeheartedly we can give that

She does still get her award.

Yes, she did receive her gold award. And actually, she was just in the news last week, and they bird safe glassed the front of a Madison Parks building. So it's continuing. If there's no more discussion on this one, we can move on to discuss potential elimination of minimum parking requirements. There were four required readings in your packets, and I would invite Trustee Stowell up to kind of lead this conversation, because this is his item. His memo was the fourth one.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate the previous thing because it kind of dovetails nicely with what I'm talking about and you guys not wanting to create an ordinance that forces people to spend more than they might otherwise have to, which is what we do right now with our parking minimum mandates. I'm just going to read off my... My script here. This is the first in what I hope to be a series of code changes aimed at, among other things, affordability. This would eliminate government parking mandates in the village. And I want to start off by first stating what this is not. It's not eliminating parking. It's not telling anyone that they have to decrease the amount of parking that they have. And it is not telling anyone that they have to redevelop their parking lot. What this is is starting to bring the village code into the 21st century. Property owners go through a lot of due diligence when developing their properties. They have a business model or a home building plan that they go over extensively when they are getting ready to build. They're well aware of the cost of their project and the parameters they need to meet in order to make their business's home or property successful. The Village of Couch Grove should not undermine their efforts by forcing them to build more parking spots than they might deem necessary. Forced minimum parking mandates mean that a business may have to either buy more land or shrink the size of their planned development to meet an arbitrary stall requirement. That can cost a lot more money either in upfront costs or in reduced income due to a smaller business footprint. The village should let property owners decide for themselves how much parking they need in order to help their business survive. Parking affects a lot of everyday life. It determines the size, shape, and cost of new buildings, the fate of old ones, the patterns of traffic, viability of transit. Life of public space, character of neighborhoods, and the village budget. There's no denying the need for parking spaces, especially somewhere like Cottage Grove, which is heavily car-dependent. but we must also examine what too much parking caused by parking mandates can lead to. A 2026 UCLA meta-analysis of parking mandate research, which is one of the things that was in the packet, that analysis indicates that the parking minimums do the following. Raise rents and home prices by increasing the cost of construction, reduces housing development, increases driving and traffic congestion, contributes to parcel and building vacancies when they prevent new uses, reduces commercial development density, reduces land values, limits property tax revenue potential, contributes to urban heat, contributes to water pollution, flooding, and habitat degradation, and undermines walkability and degrades urban design. That same meta-analysis also indicates that eliminating parking mandates works. Eliminating minimums enables the construction of more housing, the development of smaller, more affordable homes, more active street fronts, and more infill which helps to reduce sprawl. Eliminating parking minimums can slow the growth of new parking, but it does not generally lead to developers ceasing to build new parking on new construction. Simply put, we should entrust property owners to evaluate how much parking they need, not mandate it based on nothing but gut feelings. Letting property owners decide for themselves might not change how they operate, but it could. Letting people build smaller, more affordable developments saves homeowners and business owners money, helps preserve farmland, and prevents sprawl, lessens runoff, and pollution. Getting rid of parking mandates is a free market decision that is pro-business, pro-affordability, pro-infill, pro-sustainability, and pro-environment. Thank you.

All right. And this is just for discussion tonight. So open it up to commission members for discussion on the elimination of parking, minimum parking requirements. Future agenda items would then have, there'd have to be a public hearing and a plan commission. So just putting that out there as how the process would work. But who wants to go first? Alex.

No.

I think especially with what sounds likely to be the stormwater utility being put into place, this will help give both businesses and residents a lot more flexibility in responding to the potential increase that they might be looking at in fees. You think of Piggly Wiggly, and I don't think I've ever seen more than 15 cars in the parking lot where there's significantly more parking spaces than that, except for when we have our marketplace days, which is phenomenal. But removing some of that, turning it back into green space, I think gives the property owners a lot more flexibility. But then again, thinking of the environmental impact, that reduces heat sink, it has a lot of potential benefits. On the flip side, one thing I am concerned about is as we are trying to attract businesses, and we don't control a lot of the roadways within the village is there the potential that we might see businesses coming in and then have you know more clogged streets where now we have some pedestrian or bicycle safety concerns because now there's a lot of parking on on the shoulders versus in the parking spaces so i'm a little bit mixed on if if i would support an outright removal of the ordinance versus a dramatic reduction And so that's kind of just my thoughts for now is very in support of reducing whatever the minimum is right now for a variety of reasons, in particular with the stormwater commission or utility coming on. But I think before removing it outright, doing some studies on what, if any, potential safety issues there might be if it were to be just completely eliminated outright. Thanks.

Chris, do you maybe want to respond to what the literature says about cities that have removed or eliminated minimum parking requirements and what that has actually shown?

Yeah. For the most part, eliminating the minimums doesn't lead to municipalities with new development that doesn't have any parking. They still try to meet the market. The only place that you really see them not doing parking is in dense urban cores like Seattle or London or things like that that are super walkable and you don't really need parking. For suburban areas like us, they're still going to meet the market demand and still, even in places that have eliminated them, I think, I'm trying to remember the exact figures, but if you consider sufficient parking to be a lot that's 85% full, even places that have that still only fill 65% of their parking lot, and even in areas that are considered I don't remember if it's, they have a parking shortage. They still are only, I think they're only 45% full on their parking lot, so it doesn't, none of the literature that I've read, and I've read a lot, shows that there's a ton of spillover onto public on-street parking stalls.

Yeah, I'll just add page 50 of one of the reports showed that the commercial developments still provide more, at least the minimum, if not more parking based on their own analysis.

Yeah, and that's the thing. It's not necessarily intended to eliminate parking. It's not intended to eliminate parking. It's letting the businesses decide that. A lot of the parking requirements right now They're not really, they're not based on health or safety or science. They're kind of just, people just came up with them because it seemed good in the 50s. And then one town did it and the other town saw them do it and they're like, well, let's do that as well. So they're not really based on anything sound. It's kind of just vibes. So I think just letting businesses decide for themselves what there should be is really the best way to go. And some people are going to say, what if they don't build enough parking? And I think that's a legitimate concern. What if they don't build enough parking? But there's other considerations too, like what if they don't hire enough staff? What if their building isn't big enough for the demand they meet? What if their hours aren't long enough for people to come there? And there's a lot of decisions that go into starting and operating a business. And generally, we leave that to the businesses to figure out how that works, except for parking. I mean, it would be like us having an ordinance that would say, groceries and pharmacies have to stay open 24-7 because some people work third shift. And just like parking places, people need groceries and they need medicine. So you guys have to stay open 24 hours. It doesn't make much sense to me.

Can I ask you a question? You also chair the Housing Chapter Committee, and I was wondering if you could, like I see this as being kind of an outcome of the work that that committee has done over the last year. I think affordability was one of the top KPIs that came out of the study, and how can we do a better job in the village, and I think Obviously, like the stack of books and all of the attachments show that if you want to do something, you know, increase affordability, eliminating parking minimums is actually one good way to do that.

Yeah, so a lot of the people that I've talked to, builders, realtors, things like that, the two biggest concerns they have are materials costs and land costs. Those are the two biggest drivers of housing affordability, and we can't really legislate those. But we can... allow people to build smaller so they don't have to use less material, and they don't have to use as much land. So this is just one facet of allowing developers to build a little smaller. And that's going to help people who currently can't downsize into the village and age in place. It could help recent graduates. It could help MP Nesters seniors. be able to have a smaller footprint uh... property and you know there's a lot of there's a there's there's We are a car-centric village, but there are some people who don't drive. I talked to some people at Drumlin Reserve who are frustrated because they don't drive and they have to go to Piggly Wiggly to get their groceries. And that's a mile and a half away. They're not going to walk there. So that's an added cost because they don't have a car. So if somebody wanted to build a small grocery store that's near there that they could actually get to and they don't necessarily need to have I mean, I'll use Piggly Wiggly as an example, and it's only as a visual example. I don't want anyone to think that I'm trying to tell Piggly Wiggly what to do. But if you look at the parking lot there, or pretty much any business in the village, you look at the lot, it's usually... IT'S LIKE 30% BUILDING, 50% PARKING AND THE REST IS STORM WATER OR GRASS OR WHATEVER. IT'S GENERALLY NOT A VERY GOOD USE OF PRODUCTIVE USE OF And it doesn't even have to be reserved for extra development, too. As John was saying, it could just be, you know, they could just reserve it as green space, and then if they need a bigger parking lot, they can pave it over in the future. But it's just, and he's right, we were just talking extensively in Utility and Public Works about efforts to decrease impermeable surfaces in the village, and this couldn't be a good way to do that.

I also think it would give developers an opportunity to turn some of that space that would be parking lot into a green strip with a sidewalk that goes from Cottage Grove Road or any of the larger roads straight up to the building and you can have people who are going to walk places have a safe way to access the building as opposed to traversing a wide open parking lot.

Like a civic strip or something with a fountain in there that people could just mill around or sit in. Yeah, it could be anything like that. But I mean, it's just, you know, and a lot of what I hear about going through campaigns is people want to maintain that small town feel. And I think that if you look at some of the bigger cities around us, Huge swaths of parking lot is not a road that I would like to go down, no pun intended. I mean, if you look at Grand Avenue and Sun Prairie, it's building, building, and then just a huge swath of parking lot. If you look at the malls, obviously nobody goes to malls anymore. It's a small building surrounded by a sea of parking. If you go down Cottage Grove Road, there's a pizza hut down there, and it's got 34 stalls for a pizza hut, and the pizza hut is delivery and carryout only. They do not need 34 stalls for that. I don't want to take the village in that direction. I would prefer to keep it... You know more compact and it you know it's another thing that will help infill too because right now if you have a vacant building that was one use and if you want to switch it to another use it might have different parking requirements so you might have to increase the parking and you might not be able to take that building and do the business that you want to do because you'd have to build more parking and it's just maybe not in the budget.

One other item for the commission to consider, too, is if we did away with this and we find ourselves with smaller parking lots, that's probably going to mean less salt usage in the wintertime, of which obviously we spend a significant amount of our year. And that's been brought up again and again by the DNR, the amount of salt that's ending up in our waterway. And fresh water's going to be an ever more precious resource as we move into the future. But one other item to consider, I look at Johnson Health Tech across from Kids Safari down that way, and they don't have enough parking. And in my opinion, that was creating a safety issue when we were attending Kids Safari, kind of pulling out. It got a little dicey at times, especially in the busier hours. I wonder if there have been ordinances for larger businesses like that where they are gonna have a routine pattern of life with kind of a set number of folks to absorb that so we don't see so much parking on the streets, which is gonna increase the villages' maintenance and repair costs, those safety issues that we see there. Have you seen any ordinances similar to that where it's maybe the larger businesses, and I'm thinking of Amazon too, where they don't, in the absence of those ordinances, take advantage of that lack of ordinance and then abuse that lack thereof.

I haven't seen too much. One option that I've heard of and it's not much I've read about, I wouldn't by any means call myself an expert in it, municipality could go to like residential permits so residents are able to park free on on street parking but if you get people coming in for your downtown or whatever it would you'd have to pay to go on to try to lower the number of non-resident people who are parking on the streets. I don't know the history behind Johnson Health Tech building their parking lot there. Obviously, I think anyone who goes there can see that they don't have enough parking. I don't know a good solution for them, besides building more, and I don't know, I don't even know if they, because as I recall, they own a lot right by Dolphin Swim. I don't even know if that's enough space for them to fit all their cars. Yeah, I don't know.

I got two sheets.

Here I go. Good conversation. I think a lot, the word I heard a lot in the conversation earlier here is comparing to a city. We're not a city. We're a destination. In order to facilitate that destination, people are driving here and it's parking. Even if we get that bus stop someday, it will be a bus stop and it will not be a network to navigate us through the spaces. It won't be a bus from the reserve to here to the pig or anything like that. We don't have a lot of high density properties where I take the elevator downstairs and I'm at a coffee shop. I'm getting in my car, I need to go somewhere. So we talk about standards, we talked about the birds earlier. This is kind of a safety issue with cars. The conversation around the pig, I got to jump around my notes to make sure I think. The pig review, I mean, is interesting, right? So it's the biggest landmark that we all see. So that's why we're comparing it. In all fairness, we're not beating up the pig. This is not, you know, but it's a... that was created at a certain point in time. And I think what's done a lot to these businesses like this is really the online shopping. And so more cars now having to park in a street is preventing these other trucks from navigating and getting through the spaces. So I think just to say that, hey, the Piggly Wiggly has available spaces, You know, it's been a platform change. Was science used in creating what we have now? I'm sure there is a degree in parking lotting. But those numbers, we've been on this committee for quite a bit and we've reviewed these quite a bit. Staff has brought a lot of recommendations to us. There has been multiple comparisons to other communities. To say that it was just sort of ad hoc or willy-nilly or there was no science put together, I think there was a lot of thought put into what we currently already do. People, businesses that need a variance, the dog daycare, I think was, you know, I think of a steel. I don't remember, but I remember having conversations because it was like, Hey, it's a big warehouse. We only have 25 people. Why do we need all this parking? We have conversations around it. There's mechanisms for businesses to say, hey, my model isn't this, let's have a conversation. And there is a process for that. If we just delete the parking requirements, it's gonna become, it will become a free-for-all. It'll be an avenue for cost reductions for sure. I mean, I think there's all those side effects there. But the control that we lose is pretty good. You know, cars are bigger than people, right? So if I go get my sandwich at the sandwich shop, I'm a very small person and I stand a little square inside that building. However, my car takes up eight by four feet of space, and that's that's a bit why they're part of their bigger And I think a lot of businesses are actually looking on how to leverage the space for multiple uses. The Dunkin' Donuts is a strip. They're sort of saying, hey, we're going to aggregate this one building. This one is really bigger at breakfast, and this one's more interested in dinners. And so they're sort of leveraging it. And I think they're doing a lot of good stuff there. uh you mentioned salt that's a good one too um because as cars potentially get pushed into the streets we have alternate side parking now granted that's at night you know and that's there's some things around there but i think once we get into winter months you know alternate side parking the idea of me going to a coffee shop i want to be close to that door i don't want to park down the street. There's a Mexican restaurant I go to in Stoughton. It's right across from the Quick Trip. And they're parking lots tiny. So we end up parking down the street in the residential area. And we walk to it. It works. It will work. However, if they had a bigger, you know parking lot I'd certainly be closer to the door in the rain So I do think about alternate side parking a Couple more things here Yeah, if we want less parking we could apply for a variance. I also think it could potentially be a little short-sighted. So my need today is Nobody visits me. Everything's just I have the UPS truck and that's all I need so I only need a little loading dock and However, my business grows and I leave, and now the next person, well, I need at least five spots. It's just not there. And so I think there's a future state where we're also trying to help carve the look and feel of what we're doing here in Cottage Grove. Yeah, and I think the big driver, is there somewhere for the requirements? Okay, well, something we should be talking about, or could be also talking about with parking, so there's a bonus here. And I'm gonna mention the city, so Madison did this. When you remodel stuff and you add a certain amount of parking spaces, they're requiring, I think, Erin, before you know the right word, electric charging. And I think, as a destination, that range anxiety, knowing that they could come and visit, they can go to the parks, and there's a place to plug in. I think that is an interesting thing to talk about. I don't know if it's something we would require, something we would strongly suggest we would get into that sort of phase. But electric charging is out there, and I don't think we have any high-speed chargers in the village, and I think those would be beneficial even for residents, like, hey, I got range anxiety, I gotta fill this thing up, I gotta get the fireside for my dinner, and they can plug in, they can do it. There's mechanisms for businesses to come in and reduce. We did it with the library board. that there was, it didn't exist, the library proposal, sorry, not really the library proposal, and we had great conversation around it, and we came up with a proposal that fit the space, but also knowing that there is no, there is no ability to do on-street parking on that road, so there had to have been a compromise. With zero parking, business can go in there and really create i think issues for us so i think it's good conversation i think it's it's worthy business by business case by case i don't think we can unilaterally strike um parking because it's going to be harder to go back and get back into it and i and i think the process does work we've had conversations with businesses saying hey i don't need this this is a barrier this is about four what can we do and and we we work it out with them so i don't i like i i'm good where we're at um if there's studies that says we you know there are numbers or plus minus one or two here i think that's just sort of noise in the system and we work with them i'd like to see cases potentially of where a village not a city a village is struggling um we're just we're just wide i mean i'm gonna If you're going to that, I'm not a biker. I know you are. And it's awesome. But I don't see a lot of businesses putting a lot of the bike stands out. Maybe they'll get into that. But we're doing a lot of work now with the paths and the multi-use path that's being done over there is phenomenal. That was a huge project that I know we talked about even here. as Hay Day was going in, who's gonna connect from the school back to Hay Day? And now it's being done and it's awesome, right? So I just don't think we're there yet, we're not a city, we don't have the density, and I wouldn't touch our numbers, that's my spiel.

So a few things about that. Smallest municipality in Wisconsin that has eliminated their parking mandates is Gilman, population 444. As far as businesses not building bike stands yet, that's kind of a chicken-egg situation. Maybe they'll build more if they get the opportunity. Variances and all that, it's a subjective standard. It can be used as a weapon if a board or committee wanted to. I'd prefer to not have that option there. And the library discussion about changing the minimums there, some people were saying 13, some people were saying 15. None of that was based on anything besides that's what I feel like it should be. There's no science behind this. It's all based on what people feel like they should have for parking. And a lot of this conversation has been, we're talking about on-street parking and salt and all that. That's all assuming that these places that build are not going to build enough parking. And I don't think that's something that we can assume because it hasn't been borne out by any of the research that I've read. They understand that right now Cottage Grove is car dependent. They're not going to... have eight spaces for a grocery store because they know that they're not going to get enough people in to let their business survive. I had another thought and it went away.

You're on track. You're on track. I think you're on track. I'm not going to arm wrestle you because I think all the thoughts and the research and the homework is there. my point is i don't you didn't convince me which is fine but we're not going to arm us we're not going to go out in the heaven i mean i think it's i think there's a lot of homework a lot of good stuff going on there and i think there will be a point where we get to a mass transit situation will we be able to create the walking destinations i think i think the the parking lot of the piggly wiggly is the one that strikes us all the most of like, hey, it's over full, but then you talk about Johnson Health Tech, and you're like, man, that was not, that's not a good safe situation right there, and we don't want to be there either. I know what you're saying about sort of it's the whim or the will of the boards or whatever, but I think that's where our sounding board of staff brings information to us as well. Yeah, maybe there is a degree in parkology. We'll have to put an ology at the end of that, but anyway. I'm with you. I just don't want to drag things. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I mean, there is an institute funded at UCLA that is dedicated researchers to the issue of parking across America. So there is a lot of science behind it. It's pretty awesome.

Do you have Donald Shoup's book there? Yeah, if you want to read 700 pages about parking, that's your book.

It takes maybe like a weekend. Yeah, OK. No big deal.

So we've talked about Piggly Wiggly. When Piggly Wiggly was built, Metro Market wasn't up the street. There wasn't a Woodman's. Online shopping wasn't available. Johnson Health Tech was built, the bicycle industry wasn't, you know, COVID hit and they exploded. So I think having a minimum, it kind of keeps the middle there. Like we do have the extremes, but I feel like we have a lot in the middle that it just kind of fits just right. So I don't know that eliminating 80% of what works for 20% of what is outdated. I just, I don't know.

I think that it's, I mean this is gonna come up in the comp plan as well too. Maybe it works for what we are right now, but it's not necessarily going to work into the future. Removing things like this and other things that you'll probably hear from me later gives us the flexibility going forward to change, because we all know that this place doesn't look like it did 5, 10, 20 years ago. And if we can give the code some flexibility, it's going to be a lot easier to let businesses, homes, the village as a whole grow and expand and mature.

know it's not part of this discussion but kind of something that's uh really important to me and ties in in a way is you know if we were to the board would move forward with some type of ordinance or changing the um the code to get rid of the the parking and we're talking about giving property owners flexibility in in what they do with their properties something in the realm of of the covenants that are getting put in place for the residential developments you know there's three large developers that essentially have locked the vast majority of the residents here into what they can and can't do with their property. And I am very open to giving property owners more flexibility over what they do with the property that they own and are paying taxes on again and again. maybe moving away from kind of legacy businesses controlling the overarching feel of our community. So in that regard, I would support that as part of a larger effort to move away from restrictions on what property owners do.

It's one of the things I've been looking into. I've had some conversations with Rick about it. There's not much we can do about covenants that are already in place since those are private contracts. Rick and I don't see eye to eye on future contracts yet. It's not something I've been able to circle back with him on it yet, but I think there's a way to do it. But I'm also not an attorney, so I'll keep talking with him about it. Well, Rick's not here, so this is your chance.

Yeah.

Well, I don't think it's in order for the motion to make.

I have mixed feelings as well on the whole parking thing and everyone's already cited the obvious. Piggly Wiggly doesn't own that. Someone built that center and and leased it to Piggly Wiggly, their space. But I agree, there's too much parking there and not used. Probably has been pretty much the whole time. But then we have Johnson Health Tech. But 40 years of working with developers, I can tell you they're not always going to look out for the best interests of the community, or sometimes even their tenants. They're going to do it on the cheap. I promise you that. And even, you know, we talk about Jimmy John's, I don't think there's too much parking there. And somehow they couldn't quite add another foot or two feet because every time I go around that drive-through, all you got to do is look at all the black marks on that curb right there and the big mud hole on the other side of the curb. when my truck and everyone else's car goes over that curb. So they don't always look in the best interest of the community. There's good developers, and then there's developers that are not so good. And I've ran into more that are not so good than I have that are good over the years.

I don't know about business, but from what I've read for... residential, it's actually more profitable for the developer to have parking spots because that means they're going to get in people who are able to afford cars and they can afford a higher rent.

I appreciate this coming forward because I do think that maybe some of the things we need to look at from a different perspective, like the heat island effect, storm water, we have bigger, stronger storms than we've had in the past, and how are we going to infiltrate that water in the middle of urban areas when it's basically paved over. And then at the same time, I think about accessibility, especially for seniors who can't get around easily. You know, maybe they can't walk from, you know, where they live to what they're going to get. I'm not sold on getting rid of minimums altogether. I would very much like to revisit thinking under this lens of, you know, what is the best fit for us going forward and what we want to be and making sure that you know, it's not a barrier for a business to open or something to be built and infill development. So I think maybe looking at the parking through, you know, through a different process might be, something that I'm more willing to start with than getting rid of altogether.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. One thing to note is that developers would still have to follow fire code and ADA and federal regulations like that. When it comes down to it, it's still, the thing that I personally can't get past is that there's no real science behind, you know, you're reducing it to what level and why. There's no, like what do you bring it down to and what's the reasoning behind that? There's like no, that I've seen no public safety or health or any reasons behind that besides this feels right, so. I get it, parking is a funny topic. Everybody wants parking. Yeah.

But then we wanted to narrow our roads to in our residential. So we want to narrow our roads and then add more parking on our roads. So now then that does start to become a safety.

Concern, you know, I think research shows that it slows cars down, which is the point. Yeah, that was in the book too.

The 30 mile an hour scooters different past the house right now have not slowed down at all. They better be wearing a helmet and we made a bigger path for them between. Yeah.

You can talk to people that live in parts of Madison with narrow streets and all that, and it doesn't necessarily slow people down. We think it might, but not necessarily. But right now, we've got to figure out how to slow the kids on the scooters and everything else down, because that's totally out of control.

I saw Chief Lang and some ambulances over by School Road, and a scooter on its side, and a child. Yeah. Getting taken into the ambulance.

So yeah. Not good.

I don't disagree with that. I don't have a bunch of books that I've read about scooters, though.

But even the stormwater, sometimes I think as a business owner looking to try to finish developing a chunk of land, I think sometimes that some of the stormwater ordinances are overkill. Seriously, you know, if you really dive into them, I mean, if forever you've never been able to discharge water off of your developed land at any greater of a rate than it was before development, I mean, that's been forever. But then we start adding more and more layers of, you know, ponds and everything else, you know, especially when, like where I'm at, there is a giant, detention pond you know just one business over that was meant for the whole development you know we have that in our business park so we have it where we do have one and we've let some businesses not have as much water retention because of the soil type, whereas sometimes, okay, you don't have the right soil, well, you're gonna have to pay to dig out that soil and truck in the special soil. So, I mean, we can look at a lot of different things other than just parking, you know, that is a burden.

Yeah, but I mean, that's a huge burden.

And the civil engineering, just to have it, to figure it out is over the top where people are, You know, like me, I've held off, you know, adding anything more to it to what I would like to do just because of the burden and the cost of that so.

OK. Any other discussion on parking?

You know, Aaron, like everyone said, we have revisited this multiple times over the years. And, you know, every time, you know, I think at one point we were probably the strictest and we loosened it up. And, you know, I think we can continue just like we talked about. looking at it and revisiting it so you know like i said we're i think there's a happy medium somewhere and but i don't think we should just get rid of it you know it's like asking your kids if they want to do chores it's going to be no but um you know i think we could revisit it again but we still need a minimum standard of some sort

There might be worth looking into some way to add flexibility, like if they provide some kind of analysis that. This is why I think I need half. The spaces that are required by the ordinance and it. Makes sense to us based on the location or how the building is getting used. We can allow that reduction or something like that, and I think we've done that.

We have done that. I mean, I don't want to see a parking lot if we don't need it. You know it doesn't make sense.

I mean, to me, that just adds another step that is unnecessary. If they're going to come to us and say, can we do that? Can we do fewer? And we say, yes, we should just let them build it in the first place. Yeah, I mean, they're doing it now.

I mean, we had a proposal for the brewery, which came through twice. It was, hey, what do you think of this? I really wanted that rooftop terrace. And we liked that. And then they came in. I think it's part of the process. It gives, I mean, if they came back and they said, hey, we're gonna build a brewery and we're not gonna give any parking, and then we have no recourse. I mean, that is the duty of the team to be good stewards of the village. And again, it's back into the extremes. What's the likelihood of that happening? No, because they want parking, right? But it's, that possibility is how these committees and why these committees are here, I think. But, Yeah, we adjust and adapt all of the ordinances. We do sort of follow Dane County. The village is getting bigger. The village is getting, other things are getting closer to us, and we adapt.

Anything to add, Aaron?

Would you like me to do anything? Motion to do not.

I mean, right now this is just a discussion. At the village board level, we had the attorney drafting language, so...

So there'll be a public hearing at the next planning commission with language and then an actual discuss, consider?

We're not approving a public hearing at this point. We're not moving forward with anything. We're just discussing the potential. And we haven't moved forward with authorizing staff to do what the board could, I guess. So the board is authorized moving forward? So why are we even here?

Yeah, exactly.

No, we're having, we talked about it last, what was that, last Monday?

So the board's moved forward with it?

To move it to plan commission. But we didn't have time to get on to this agenda.

There's no discussion to consider. So we're not even, the plan, as far as, yeah, we have nothing here to move motion to authorize.

There's no motion for tonight. Right. It's just discussion.

But the next meeting shouldn't have an open public hearing. We're not even, this group is not in alignment with moving forward with reducing minimums.

Well, what we set forward at the village board was to Draft language, have a informational discussion tonight and at a future plan commission have a public hearing for the public to weigh in as well. And I would imagine there would be a consider on that.

So we would have to see the draft language. So we're not even close to a public hearing. So the next meeting potentially, if we're talking about it, would be drafted language. And if it's already authorized, then Aaron, there's nothing for us to tell you to do or not do because the board has already told somebody to do something.

Yeah, we're supposed to be doing that. So you guys are kind of just... going by us. Process is out the window.

Generally, the commission's votes are not binding on the board, though. We generally forward recommendations to the board. And so we could say, hey, we recommend not going forward with this. And the board could tell us to kick rocks, and they're going to vote with maybe the feedback from the rest of the community. So it's not necessarily out of order. The board can say, hey, we maybe want to propose a new ordinance, pass it to the plan commission to get their feedback and their thoughts for the role that we're here for. But ultimately, we're passing forward recommendations. So I don't believe they're necessarily out of order.

I don't think we're out of order. And this will come back to the village board on Monday just during the reporting. So we'll have this feedback and then any future feedback that happens at a future meeting.

So what's that feedback going to look like? what am i going to say on monday i don't know yet the plan commission is not well there's no vote so i don't want to speak for anyone don't don't think i'm speaking but you know the board we had a discussion about there's no direction because we don't even have language.

Yeah, I usually give a report on what happens. I take pretty extensive notes. And if anyone's unhappy with the way I'm reporting, please send me an email and let me know as well. All right. Future agenda items. Erin, I'm not sure if anything else is coming down.

Yeah. Grafe will be here at the next meeting to talk about comp plan stuff. There is a church that's looking at a piece of land in the village that will be coming in for a conditional use permit either next month or the month after. Another potential business concept plan. I think we're going to have a zero lot line. I think those are the items for the next meeting. And then I'll also point out, great for our consultant with the comp plan will be at community night out next Wednesday, I believe. They'll have a booth there to engage with the public about comp plan issues. Then we're gonna have an open house right here on September 3rd from 5.30 to seven for people to come in and have some interactive booths and things. So you're all welcome and encouraged to come in participate and engage with people also.

Thanks. We're still on track for the second Wednesday? You're not moving next week, next month?

We're good? Yeah, it would be for the next meeting date is.

12th. Nope, that's today.

September 9th.

Awesome.

Yeah, okay. Number nine.

Motion to adjourn.

Motion and second. Not a debate about all those in favor. Aye.