Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress

welcome to the village of cottage grove plan commission on wednesday september 9th 2026. this is a hybrid meeting taking place both virtually on zoom with the link at the top of the agenda and in person at village hall it's also live stream now and you can watch it anytime on our youtube channel it is 6 30 so i'll call the meeting to order we have a quorum and the agenda was properly posted so we'll stand for the pledge of allegiance

Pledge allegiance to the flag. All right.

This is the public appearances, public's opportunity to speak. If you're here for a public hearing tonight, you can save those comments for the public hearing portion, but we'll allow anyone else to give public comments, starting with individuals in the room and then moving to individuals on Zoom. We just ask that you say your name, your address, and limit your comment to no more than three minutes. So if there's anyone in the room that would like to give public comments and items that are not for a public hearing, you can do so now. Yep, so the church and then the proposed zoning text amendments are public hearings so we can wait for those comments. Is there anyone online that would like to give public comment on items other than public hearings? And if so, we just ask that you put your mouse over the react button and use the raise hand feature. Seeing no one for public appearances, we'll move on to discuss and consider the minutes for a planned commission meeting on August 12th, 2026. And those meeting minutes are linked in the agenda.

Motion to approve as presented.

Second. Motion by Alex, second by Heidi. Any discussion on the meeting minutes? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Motion carries. So it is 6.32, so I'll open up a public hearing for the public's opportunity to provide input regarding an application from St. Mary and St., You asked, I probably said that wrong. Optic Church for the approval of a conditional use permit for an indoor institutional land use church located immediately north of CVS. So allow for an introduction to it and then.

Yeah, we do have representatives from the church and from the design build team if you guys want to come up.

Just to introduce myself, I'm Stefan Cornels with Sullivan Design Build. We're the design builder.

And I'm Roy San. I'm a member of the church.

Can you tell us a little bit about your project and kind of introduce the concept to us?

Yeah, so what we're applying for is just the conditional use. What we have, perfect, it's on the screen for you. We're proposing, The overall square footage would be 5,400. So there would be a first floor and a basement. And then there would also be parking for the congregation. And then you'll see there's also part of this project is just planning for the future. And it's a little conceptual in nature. So we're just planning for a future of an expansion for 5,400 square feet as well.

Just want to talk a little bit about the timings. I think you were looking for the conditional use permit now, but the building probably wouldn't happen for a little while.

Yep. Yeah, and I can speak to that. So the building of the church itself right now, we're just applying for the conditional use. And then the construction of a project would not happen for a couple of years.

Yeah, there's a staff report in the packet. This is a use that's permitted as a conditional use. That's why we're looking at this here. It is consistent with the comp plan. The site plan is just shown for reference to give you an idea of the scope and scale of the future project. It's not what we're approving tonight, so that could... I changed slightly. Would recommend a few conditions on the approval. One being just a reminder that the full site plan approval is required prior to construction subject to all relevant ordinances as they will exist at that time. If the building. proposed in the future is significantly larger than what's shown in the concept plan here. We would ask for a new conditional use permit, and we can discuss if we want to put a number on what significant means, but we just want to ensure that the scale of the project stays the same. And then as typical, the conditional use permit would apply only to the applying entity. If a new owner took the building over in the future, they would have to get a conditional use permit for their use if it was required.

If there's nothing else to add for the presentation of the concept plan, we did receive one email that was sent to the plan commission. the duplex on Manny Lane, had several questions and concerns that he wanted addressed. And I think we can probably work on some of that during the discussion portion after the public hearing. But discussion of timing of the church, allowing for different types of sound that might be heard from the adjacent neighborhood, talking about operations, um, traffic issues, uh, property taxes, um, kind of the, and the history of the developer. And so the plan commission did receive all of that, um, sent to them today and then open it up now to, um, anyone in the audience who'd like to give public comments, um, on this, um, you can come up to the front if you guys want to take a seat and we'll just allow for public comment. We'll bring you back up when we have discussion after the hearing. Yep, you can either sit or stand and just make sure the microphone is on by pressing the person with the voice.

Hello. There you go. Hi. Rod Cameron. Is it too loud or? No, you're fine. I purchased a duplex 500 502 Manly Lane September of 2017. I believe I'm the second owner. I don't know if you folks remember when Manly Lane was a dead end prior to Damascus Road. I just want to give you a little bit of history. I know of the property, Manly Lane, and that development for 20 years. I don't know why the developer all of a sudden has this thing that he wants to get involved with. First of all, I received a threat from, is it DeWitt Real Estate Development? I don't know if Mr. Feltowski is here. I was going to ask who is doing what. Does anybody know how DeWitt is involved? It's my understanding there's a Ben Feltowski. But anyways, I was going to ask Ben. how the relationship, as a property owner, I don't really like to receive a threat. It's nobody's business but me and DeWitt. It's my understanding that, again, first of all, 500 502 is that little guy right there basically within uh shouting distance so so when i shared my email and and thanks for bringing that up um i do have a couple other concerns um I don't know if it's a church or a daycare. Can anybody explain? Now, the land parcel, and I don't know if it's Mr. Fulkowski I should talk to. I live right there. I don't see a facility on that property. And the reason I ask, from the village I printed off tonight's agenda. Conditional use criteria. In the opinion of the staff, the facility has operated as a daycare for many years With no negative impacts or undue burden on the village. What the hell is that good reading?

That was actually that was a leftover sentence from a separate memo, so that was should be striking from the memo. So there is no facility and it is not operating as a daycare.

Yeah, I live right there. I didn't see, but that's that's misleading. You know, obviously I live there, but. Talk to other residents of the village. If the church puts up 40 parking stalls, 20, at 3 o'clock every day that school's in session, and you can talk to the CVS pharmacy on this. You're going to have 20 cars if there's 20 parking lots. You're going to have 30 cars and Manly Lane is a spill over. It doesn't matter if it's a school thing or XYZ. I see somebody nodding their head. That's really a. but in reading this, it was my understanding that the traffic flow on a Saturday night, Sunday from the church will have very little impact. Well, is it a church or is it a daycare center? Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to give public comment on this portion of the agenda? Is there anyone online? Well, 642, so we'll close the public hearing and invite the developer back up and open it up for discussion from the board. Oh, we have one hand.

Sorry, I'm at work right now. I just had a quick question on like just is there going to be soundproofing in the building and what time are services like going to be held at for the two biggest questions I had?

All right. Thank you. So we'll officially close the public hearing and allow it for conversation between the Commission and the developer. Maybe you can start, we'll just clarify that this is not going to be a daycare facility, or maybe you can talk a little bit about your operations. I know some churches do sometimes operate with other services that they provide, but that line in the memo was not meant to be there. My apologies.

Yes, this is a religious church, Christian church. It has no daycare services provided.

Okay. And then can you maybe talk a little bit about kind of the operations and your plan on having services and, you know, to the other questions that were asked? presented through the public hearing.

Yes, thank you all for the questions. The first question about church scheduling, there is a mass generally on Saturday night that is lightly attended, shouldn't affect traffic significantly. And then there is a mass on Sunday morning from around the hours of 8 AM to around the hours of 12.30 to 1 PM. That are, those are usually the two. Obviously there are some some holidays and things that fall on different days, but that is the vast majority of the, the year.

Open it up to commission members who have questions. Go ahead, Alex.

Thank you. Thank you for the concept plan. So in part of the concept, considering the neighbors' direct borders, what do you have ideas or plans for the yard use and potential impact with the neighbors?

There's no plans for that at this time. There's no, the only plans right now is for possibly a future expansion of the 5,400 square feet like we're showing.

So right now, go ahead.

Per ordinance, there would have to be a buffer yard between the two different zoning districts. So some combination of trees or fence along the property lines, all the way adjacent to the residential properties. So given the building location, I think they would have plenty of room to do that.

And that stuff's not there now. right no right it's a vacant lot right so yeah easy question so how do we the the burdens on them to do the work how do we how do we ensure that the neighbors are all aligned with this is the right thing to do not we can't make everyone happy there's half a dozen nine properties something i don't know and so it's like wood fence metal fence trees bushes more open concept how do we ensure that the neighbors are in the loop

Yeah, so they'll have to come back for full site plan approval, engineering drawings, landscaping, all that when it's built, all before it's built, but not until they're getting ready to build it, which could still be a couple years. As I said, the ordinances do require the landscaping buffer. There are sound regulations that are applicable to any property in the village that would apply here as well. um as far as traffic with the services being saturday night sunday morning i don't think that's as much of a concern it would be more of a concern if it was overlapping with the school time but in this case it would not be um i mean as far as noise i don't know if you're thinking you know, a bell or something like that in the building. I mean, we could put a requirement on that that says they couldn't do something like that, but.

We have noise ordinances already. Yeah, yeah.

So I think that covers about there.

I'm gonna make a comment to our, this is from me, not the commission, to the residents. We had a similar situation with a vacant lot when New Tech came in. And the residents were very engaged with how that property played out. And so it's really good that the residents are here and it's really good that the residents remain engaged. So I'm only gonna be able to do so much and see so many things and catching the daycare, I think that's all great. So just to the residents and watching in the room, focus on being part of this process and thank you for coming out. So that's what I got, thanks.

As far as the developer, I believe his only involvement is to sell the property. It's been for sale for a long time. It's not his project. He'd be selling it to the church.

So right now, one of the later agenda items is an amendment to the parking requirements. If that were to change where there is no parking requirement, how, if at all, would that affect your plans?

I don't think the elimination of a minimum parking standard would affect this. We would still need parking for the congregation and it would kind of have to be planned for peak parking demand. So I don't think that would change our parking in any way.

So you'd still aim for that 50 parking spots is what we see on there right now? Yes, correct. Thanks. Would you anticipate expanding if the future plan, there's the future potential addition, would you be looking to expand parking at that point?

It's possible, yeah, and we tried to address it. It may not be 100% visible at this point, but there's a portion of that parking lot that gets closer to the street that would be for future expansion if needed. Okay.

And then because it was brought up by some of the residents, it sounded like you're an existing church right now. Does your current location have any type of external sound amplification, anything of that nature?

What do you mean by sound?

So I wouldn't want to constrain you, but like bells, like as you see in some municipalities where they have mosques, they have a call to prayer. I don't think that's part of your practice, but I'm unfamiliar with it. So if there is any type of noise that would be generated outside of the church, does that exist for you guys or do you plan to have that?

No, we do not plan to have any external noise. It would probably be most similar to a Catholic church in that most of the service is done via a microphone and some small hymns that are generally not done with any significant noise.

Perfect, thank you. And then just a couple of comments. Another resident had mentioned, discussed the tax basis and I don't think we would be able to and I certainly would not entertain denying a permit simply because an applicant was a non-profit. taxes are certainly an issue, but probably better taken up with the board rather than the plan commission. But actually the creation of the stormwater utility will actually help offset that because there will be Payments required even of nonprofits for their impermeable surfaces. And then a comment on the traffic. Frankly, I'm in favor of more on street parking. I think it'll slow down some of the drivers that have turned our wide roads into raceways. And so I would welcome all of your congregation to park on the street. and to slow drivers down and encourage safety in our neighborhoods because we have a lot of families. And I think it's a real serious issue that we probably don't have short-term solutions for. And so parking on the road is a good way to get people to look out. And it can certainly be annoying if you live in those neighborhoods, but that's also part and parcel of being part of a community. That's it for me. Thank you.

Heidi, go ahead.

Thanks. I just want to ask a little bit about process, because it kind of looks like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, you want kind of a Assurance from the village that this is would be an acceptable conditional use in this area and then Within a few years as you I would think maybe get closer to a fundraising goal or something along those lines as you have, you know the goals with the congregation Then you would bring forward the site plan and have more specifics is that kind of aligned with what both the village and the congregation's plans?

Yeah, I think they just don't want to buy the property if they don't know they can build a church on it is basically what it comes down to.

Yeah, I would agree. We would be awaiting a fundraising plan to build the church itself.

All right, great. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions from the commission?

I'm just curious. I mean, this is further down the road when you're actually up and running, but in Sun Prairie, where you currently are, I'm wondering what you bring to the community, any kind of outreach, any kind of events, even for non-congregants. I just want to know what we would have joining us.

Yeah, we do multiple volunteer events throughout the year. For example, we do donations via Shoebox for different food and clothing items and things for the community. We also bring some amount of business to the community, having, as you can imagine, 50 plus people each Sunday brings economic benefits to the surrounding areas. We've also done other fundraising things for homeless shelters. things of that nature. I'm trying to think, what was the other part of your question? Sorry. Okay.

And then I know we have one member of the commission online and just want to make sure that we, if he does have it done, if you have any questions and make sure that you're able to ask them.

I have no questions.

Just kind of one last follow up. So as we go through the site plan process, just for those people that are in attendance that may not be as familiar with the process, that's where we'll get into the more specifics of the kind of between the uses, between residential and other use. That's where we get into landscaping or sound and noise. But we have ordinances in place that we'll be following to mitigate those concerns with the neighbors. So that just isn't part of this approval piece. Aaron, yeah. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure that those that came in attendance understand that. Thank you.

Thank you, Heidi. I would like the commission to weigh in on the staff condition on the similar signs and coming back with a new conditional use permit if the future expansion is larger.

I don't want it to be too tight, like it's $5,400 on the plan and you come back with $5,500. That's basically the same thing, but we don't want it to be 15,000 square feet either. That's kind of a different project too with different traffic and parking and things like that.

And stormwater and easements and buffering and all of those things.

Do you want a more specific percentage? Or do you want to tighten the language? Or are you thinking, I see where you're going with it, but I'm not sure if you want more tight.

What is substantially larger to the commission today? And what is that going to mean in two years? And yeah, I think I want to tighten it up a little bit.

Yeah.

And I don't know Aaron if you have a recommendation like do you put a percentage on it? Do you say if it exceeds the proposed? I would think at least.

25% more, maybe 50% more.

Yeah, I would say 50 is.

The expansion is basically the same size according to this, right? So it's 5,400 is the first. The expansion is 5,400, which is double. It's 100%, right? I think the 25% feels like a percent. And all that does is it puts, to your point, it puts in a toll gate and says, okay, they went over. They went to 26%, which means they come back and we do it again. It's not a problem. It's just.

It just puts a little bit of regulation on it so that we have some checks and balances. Yeah.

I don't.

It's the commission. See nodding heads. So 25%.

Does that either seem reasonable for you? Yeah, I think that's perfectly reasonable.

Would it be helpful to establish that number as a hard number now so then it's 25%?

Add that to the staff conditions.

So can I try this again? I'll make a motion to recommend approval for the application from St. Mary. Is it Rewath? Royce. Royce. Thank you. And St. Royce Coptic Church for approval of a conditional use permit for an indoor institutional land use on the parcel number as indicated in item number seven of our meeting agenda, located immediately north of the CVS at the northeast corner of Damascus Trail and West Cottage Grove Road, with staff conditions updating the number two condition to a 25% Growth limit to the plan.

I would second with one adjustment. You referenced agenda item seven. It's agenda item six. Just for clarity.

The one I printed said, that's fine. Oh, you're right.

They're both related. They're both related.

Motion by Alex, second by John. I think that sounded good. Any other discussion on the motion? Otherwise, all those in favor? aye opposed abstain motion carries thank you for coming tonight thank you for having us all right it is 6 58 so we will go to number eight and open up the public hearing for the public's opportunity to provide input regarding various proposed zoning text amendments related to the parking requirements and purpose statements I'll invite Trustee Stoa up to give us, I know we all discussed this at the last planning commission. I'll let Trustee Stoa kick it off, and we do have some wish to speaks for the public hearing.

All right, so this is, my remarks here are slightly different, well, substantially different from last time, so I apologize that you'll have to hear me talk again. I'm here to speak in support of both of the zoning changes tonight. The first one's pretty simple. In alliance language in the village code with the language in the recently passed Wisconsin Act 68, the act itself passed on a broadly bipartisan basis. Excuse me. The second one, elimination of parking minimum mandates requires more context. Let me start by first stating what this is not. It's not eliminating parking. It's not telling anyone they have to decrease the amount of parking they have. And it is not telling anyone that they have to redevelop their parking lot. What it is, is removing a government mandate that potentially forces developers, business owners, or homeowners to spend more than they need to on unnecessary parking spots. 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 cost or in reduced income due to a smaller business footprint. The village should let property owners decide for themselves how much parking they need to help their business survive. Minimum parking requirements raise rents and home prices by increasing cost of construction. They reduce housing development, increase driving and traffic congestion. contribute to property and building vacancies when they prevent new uses, reduce commercial development density, reduce land values, and limit property tax revenue potential, contribute to urban heat, contribute to water pollution, flooding, and habitat degradation, undermine walkability, and degrade urban design. I understand the hesitance to change this, I do. Change is hard, but the only reason this policy has remained is because it's what we're used to, not because it's good policy. If minimums were not in place and they were proposed as a new policy, we would dismiss it because we would see it for what it is, an unnecessary increase in the cost of development. I know this because it parallels the bird glass debate that Plan had at the last meeting. We didn't want to require all new developments to have new bird safe glass because it would add to the cost of the development and things are already unaffordable enough. Because of this hesitance to move past the status quo, the instinct is going to be to take a more incremental approach and maybe just lower the minimums. But here's why lowering the minimums doesn't make any sense. The process of removing them is simple. You just strike the language from code. Lowering them is much more complicated and, as stated before, arbitrary. First of all, who's going to decide what the new language is? The Planning Commission, the Village Board, Aaron? And even after that, how do we decide what the new minimums are going to be? Should we cut them in half, cut them by a third? What's the reasoning behind that? The simple fact is there's no science behind how many there should be. It is all based on feelings. Just look back at the debate about parking requirements from early 2025. We have no idea how much parking a place is going to need. It's all arbitrary. We need to leave it to the people that are actually doing the due diligence to decide how much they will need. Let me give you an example found in the book Walkable City Rules by Jeff Speck. An apartment complex in California wanted to have the city waive parking requirements to lower costs for them and to be able to offer lower rents. They were also very close to good transit, and they decided for that particular development, parking was not necessary. They asked the government for a waiver. The city partially gave in, but still required 0.67 spots per unit, which is far less than what our current minimums are for apartment complexes. And even those decreased mandates still increased the project costs by 38%. Now I know that example might have someone say, see, developers will try to cut parking if they're allowed to. But it's important to remember that this particular development was near really good public transit, something Cottage Grove does not currently have. The point is that we should not be getting in the way of developers deciding how much parking they need to make a project work because it can and does drive up costs. Developers will meet the market because they want their business to succeed. Development simply cutting out parking to save money has just not been borne out in any study of places that have removed minimums with the exception of extremely large dense places with good transit like downtown Seattle and London, which we are nothing like. There are a lot of decisions that go into starting and running a new business. What are the operating hours going to be? How many employees will they need? How much inventory should be bought? How big does a building need to be? What materials to use for the building? And for most of these, we trust the business owner to be able to make the decisions that they believe will work for them, except for parking. Imagine if we told the grocery store that to build their store, they had to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As members of the commission have mentioned before, we do have a way to allow less parking than the minimum through variances. But imagine you're trying to start a small business. You've saved every last penny, you know what you can afford, and you need fewer parking spots than the minimum. You now have to spend extra time and money to prepare for an approval to get a variance that isn't even guaranteed. Maybe that time, money, and uncertainty pushes you over the edge to not being able to start a business. Additionally, variances are not an ideal tool to work around things like this. If they were, why don't we pass a bird safe glass ordinance and then offer variances to developments that cannot afford them? And again, instead of being based on evidence or studies, variances are really, in the end, at the whim of the plan commission, and whether or not they feel the amount of parking is enough to warrant approving a variance. One of the most common things I hear from developers is that they want certainty. They don't want to have to spend extra time and money to do things on a case-by-case basis. It raises their costs, which in turn raises costs for tenants and home buyers. Oh, I'm sorry. I deleted that. Raises costs for tenants and home buyers. Another aspect that we must now consider, which was not a factor in my original proposal but now warrants consideration, is the creation of the new stormwater utility and charging properties based on their impermeable surface area. To have that as well as mandatory parking minimums effectively tells developers you have to pay for how much impermeable surface you have and also you are required to build this much impervious surface. That's not a very just system and could be a double whammy for them increasing costs even more. Mandatory parking minimums are an outdated and arbitrary mechanism which only serves to unnecessarily increase the cost of development. We should have faith in property owners that they are going to do what is right for their businesses or home to succeed. They do not need the village micromanaging their parking based on how much we feel they are going to need. Eliminating this requirement can start to address the affordability concerns that we're seeing across our village, our state, and our country.

We do have a wish to speak for him, Robert Proctor.

Thank you. Good evening. Robert Proctor. I'm the General Counsel for the Wisconsin Builders Association and the Government Affairs Director for the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin. I also represent a lot of developers who do a lot of multifamily and single family development. Both the Builders Association and Realtors Association are here in support of amending the ordinance to remove the parking minimums. I also know that the Thousand Friends of Wisconsin have sent in a letter in support, and it's rare that you see such a pro-environmental group and then the pro-business groups both having the same understanding of the problem with parking minimums. Parking minimums are one of those issues that seem, when you don't get into the nuance at the top level, like, well, of course we'd have parking minimums. And then you don't see everything that comes from it. I think it was very interesting that the church was asked a great question. Well, what about the parking minimums? Will it change anything? No, we need 50 stalls. The people who invest the money and know how much they're going to invest have the biggest stake in figuring out how much PARKING THEY NEED. IF THERE'S A MISTAKE IN THE AMOUNT OF PARKING, IT'S GOING TO COST THEM THE MOST. THEY'RE THE OWNER OF THE PROPERTY. AN EXAMPLE THAT I'VE SHARED BEFORE IS THERE'S A PROJECT THAT I KNOW OF THAT I WORKED WITH THE DEVELOPERS ON. THEY HAD A MANAGEMENT COMPANY THAT MANAGES 3,000 APARTMENT UNITS. THEY HAD DONE FIVE APARTMENT BUILDINGS. THEY TOLD THE CITY HOW MANY PARKING STALLS THEY NEEDED AND THEY SAID NO, OUR PARKING MINIMUMS REQUIRE X AMOUNT MORE. We're like, well, we then would need to build an entire additional underground floor of parking. And the city said, okay, well, and they're like, well, I can't support it. So the city did a TIF in order to build an additional floor of parking and you go there and they don't even assign stalls because they have so much parking. It looks as if the building's not full, even though it's full. And the point is it's just a waste of money that gets passed on. It could either get passed on to a municipality that needs to provide TIF to make the project work to allow for housing, or it gets passed on directly to the renters. Again, I think that the, could there ever be an example where somebody underestimates the number of parking stalls they need? Sure, but the idea that the village is able to sit down and just from scratch, without seeing a project, decide exactly how many parking stalls every project needs as a minimum, is just not realistic. And so again, on behalf of the realtors and builders, we think it's in the best interest of the village, best interest of your citizens, best interest of the people that will have to rent and shop and be here that you let the project itself make the decision on how much parking they need. Thank you.

All right, is there anyone else in the room that would like to give comment? Is there anyone else online that would like to give comments in this public hearing? We did receive two emails with attachments and they were sent to the commission and asked that you send that on to the village board as well. So the Madison Area Builders Association executive director did write a letter in support of removing the parking minimums. And then as mentioned, the 1000 Friends of Wisconsin also wrote in, their executive director wrote in support of removing the parking minimums in Cottage Grove. And again, everyone has access to those. So I will make sure that no one else wants to give comment during the hearing. And it's 7.09, so I'll close the public hearing, and we can move on to number nine, which is discuss and consider the proposed text amendments related to parking requirements, and then also the purpose statement. And Erin, I don't know if you have anything else you'd like to add.

I can just explain the memo a little bit. As Chris mentioned, the purpose statement, that's language that comes straight from the state statute. Just kind of bringing ourselves up to date on the intent of the ordinance. I also struck master from where it says comprehensive master plan. That's just kind of an outdated term. It's really just a comprehensive plan now. And as far as the parking, the way this is drafted, it's simply just to remove the parking requirement from each land use. Not touching the section about how parking is designed, minimum stall sizes and aisle widths would all stay the same.

All right. Discussion amongst the commission. Go ahead, Alex.

There's two items sort of here. Are they tied together?

They wouldn't have to be, no. They're just kind of packaged as one ordinance amendment.

So if I can take a swing in it, unless there's other comment I can, well, it opens up the comment after I make a motion anyway, right? Okay. I'll take a swing at the first part. I'm gonna make a motion not to recommend approval of various proposed zoning text amendments related to parking requirements. I'll second that motion.

There's a motion by Alex and a second by not to approve the parking text amendments. Any discussion on this motion?

Just my piece. I mean, we talked about this last commission that generally not in my position hasn't changed much, generally not in favor. Um, I think we can go through the ordinance and fix things, but a unilateral strikeout puts us in a spot we may not be ready for. A lot of the references, everything we talked about before and even today was brought up about cities and good public transit, which we just don't have yet. So we're not there. I'm not saying we can't get there someday. We're just not in a place where we could put that many cars on a street. and then have a straight face conversation about creating more bike paths that are part of the street as well. So I already see conflicts with the bike paths and cars parking or being in the way and vehicles. And so it's at this point, I can't see a little unilateral strike out of of all of our parking requirements.

Thanks. This is something that my viewpoint on this has changed over time as I've done more research on parking minimums, read more examples and planning theory, and heard from more investors in housing and commercial developments. We have new challenges to tackle and I think that utilizing our land in the most efficient way possible will benefit a lot of people in the community. So I've actually changed my mind on this subject over time and actually support removing the parking minimum. So it's not something that I thought I was going to do over time, but I see it from a different light lately. So I appreciate that we're having a discussion about this.

I understand the hesitation and you think like, oh, we just trust the developers to choose how much parking they need or whatever. And you kind of scoff at that. Like, oh, we trust developers. They're going to save money. I do think that, I mean, the church was a perfect example, like you said, that they need 50 spots, they're going to have 50 spots. I know we feel burned by Johnson Health Tech, but I don't really think that's a rule. I think it's probably an outlier, and I think it's... Um, a lot more in people's minds because it's right across from the daycare and people don't like pulling out of there. Like, so that is like, that is an example of where it is like completely, they don't have enough spots there, but I don't think that will happen if we strike the language about the minimums.

I'VE DONE QUITE A BIT OF READING THANKS TO TRUSTEE STOA. I'VE INFILTRATED MY GOOD READS LIST FOR THE LAST MONTH OR SO ON THIS. You know, it was mentioned that the last time we had this discussion, the last time that parking minimums were discussed was the library parking minimum, library museums parking minimum ordinance discussion. And so I actually went back and watched all of those meetings again. And I think that conversation started in October of 25 and ended up discussing those through February, or 24 through February of 25. And we came with, obviously I was heavily involved in that, but looking at all of the different, we did the research on it. We tried to put a science to it. And the plan commission came back and felt, there was a lot of feelings behind it, that the parking was just, at first, nobody was going to go to a library and then everyone was going to go to a library. And we ended up still over what, was recommended by independent analysis, by the library board, by the architect, and by what other municipalities had shown their minimums to be, but then also what the usable data was. And so it was completely based on how that commission was operating, how they felt in that meeting. They felt one way actually in December and by February had completely reversed their decision on it. And so that was changed within just a couple of months. And then, I mean, there's obviously a case study that just happened right here in front of us tonight that shows that developers are more than capable of coming up with their own decisions, and they are the biggest. They're putting the most risk into their project, and they want to benefit the most out of it. So I am completely on board with removing parking minimums.

When this was originally discussed last month, I was very hesitant to offer support to it. And since then, I actually took the time over the last month to drive around the village and really just look at how much surface is just empty, paved nothingness. There's certainly concern to be had for the hypothetical scenarios. I mean, I myself am very concerned about large corporations coming in and, you know, taking advantage of a lack of a requirement and then, you know, masses of employees parking on the road. But I just I really don't think that's realistic. And the initial feeling of that concern has kind of evaporated as I do drive around and I do see empty parking lots, just dead empty space when I know myself and many of the other residents that I've spoken to have really been clamoring for something to draw people to Cottage Grove. And with the removal of a parking requirement, that could certainly open up new development opportunities where maybe more facilities or larger facilities are put in place that then attract other folks. And so for me, it really comes down to opportunity cost. What is the opportunity cost of just having a bunch of asphalt all over the village that's not getting used versus what could potentially be there And then all the side benefits that go with it from the environment and everything else that was discussed. And so I would support the removal of the minimum requirements. But that has been a shift for me. So I appreciate the discussion.

Any other comments, Aaron?

Yeah, just to comment on that. A lot of the larger projects we've had in the village, like the Amazon and the hotel and the apartments, were all approved as planned unit developments. We have more control over that process, so we, if someone was proposing obviously not enough parking, we would have some recourse there to make them put it in, so. How?

You have no ordinance to propose for recourse, how?

Because you can put conditions on a planned unit development. Yeah, but how? There's no ordinance.

Right, so I know we struggled with the hotel, and they were right up against the gas station, and so many units, and they need to accommodate basically so many cars per unit in the same thing. And so I think that's the struggle is it's not necessarily a control issue, and it's not necessarily we have too much parking. All of that's correct, but the unilateral strike is what concerns me. The library brought up, that was a really good, that is a good case study, a case study we were all a part of in one way or another. One of the issues with that property was it was a square peg round hole. There was only so many spots, and they were trying to make the equation fit what was there so that no additional construction needed to be done. I think we ended up with one additional space. The math just was like, hey, we need to cut in one more spot, and this works. The other big issue with that property was it's on a street with no parking. So we also, we're offering the church that came in today, another case study that we can relate to, parking on the street. It helps slow us down. I think that road is no parking at that section. So they're gonna have to go around the corner, which is fine. I grew up at a church that had no parking lot. It was back in Pennsylvania. Old community, built in the 20s, whatever it was, all town homes. And you walk blocks. You drove, then walk blocks. It happens. Not many of the neighbors went to the church either. So I don't know how they felt about us parking in front of their houses, but it worked out. And I think I appreciate what the developer said. And hey, we need these 50 spots. That's his answer today with the ordinances today, right? And so I think that's kind of Rahmat. It's just the unilateral strike is just, it seems a bit reckless when we don't have the city services that are referenced in all those studies. But great conversation. I'm not with you. There's a lot of vacant space. We talked about the pig, designed and built before delivery, before go grub hubs and whatever hubs that deliver things. I do think about the Amazon property. We probably specified what they had to build and probably have a huge cistern because of that.

Did it allow them to build less of it and just save space for additional?

So there was a, they were helped out, I guess, whatever the right word would be. I don't disagree with any, it's all good conversation. The unilateral is just what, I'm stuck on from being able to help businesses guide their decisions better. Anyway, sorry.

Kim, go ahead. We've talked about the case studies. We've got Amazon. We've got the church. We've got Johnson Health Tech. Those are all commercial. We don't have a case study in residential. I'm going to talk about feelings, but I feel developers developing an apartment complex, if they can cut out the parking spaces, they're not going to care how many people don't have a parking space when they're renting. You can park on the street. I've seen it. I've seen it happen even when there are parking minimums and the streets are swamped. You can't find a spot. It snows. You're in a snowy, like if we could, I would consider maybe separating commercial and residential and commercial. They're going to do it because they, they're, they're part of getting the business, getting the people in and they, they want the parking to be their developers for residential and I just, I don't think, I don't think they care that much. So I think eliminating minimums are, you know, you're gonna take that, take those away. Is rent gonna go down? You know, you talk about cost savings. Is this really gonna affect rent? I don't know, that's just my thought. I think the commercial and residential parts of it possibly could be split out and eliminating commercial and not residential, I don't know.

This is a good point, too, with the residential, because there was the mention of a vacant parking floor. Okay, so what was their vacancy rate? How many were dual parent, family, dual occupancy? That type of thing. I think there's a little more to it. And I like the idea of separating that, which is not this document, unfortunately. Yeah, thank you. It was a good comment.

So the motion on the table was to recommend denial of specifically the parking. I want to make sure I have that correct.

Parking requirement piece. Yes. I separated the two, basically the piece and then the statement. Okay. So the parking piece.

You want to do a roll call vote? Sure.

Brinkmeyer?

I'm in favor of the motion.

Aye.

Opposed?

Aye. Cal Nelson? Nay. Murphy? Nay. Sale? Aye. Scheffler?

Nay.

Motion fails.

Can I then do the inverse and make a motion to approve? So motion to approve the various proposed zoning text amendments related to parking requirements and purpose statements.

Can we separate it?

It's up to you. It's your motion. I have no issue separating them. It might be nice to have just a clean

I mean, I'm good with the statements because it was a state ordinance chapter or whatever thingy. So if we have to update language to be consistent, that's fine.

Let's get a second on the motion and then we can amend it. I'll second it.

Do you want to work?

I'll second his motion as stated. And then do you want to amend to separate?

Yeah, I'll amend it to recommend approval of the various proposed zoning text amendments related to parking requirements.

Let's take that one first. And I second that. All right, can you roll call vote? Sure. I can't count very well, so let's do roll call. Plus Don's online. Brinkmeyer?

Nay.

Heim?

Aye.

Justitian?

Nay.

Cal Nelson? Aye. Murphy? Aye. Sale? Nay. Sheffler?

Aye.

Motion carries.

I mean, I'll make a motion to approve the zoning text amendments related to the purpose statement.

Second.

CKN and Alex. Any discussion on the purpose statement edits? Do roll call on this. Brinkmeyer.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Helen Ellison. Aye. Murphy. Aye. Sam. Aye. Sheffler.

Aye.

Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. I thought that was a good.

Just a piece of bookkeeping then. Should we split those for the board agenda like that then?

Yeah. Let's do that. All right. Good discussion. Let's move on to number 10, presentation and discussion with grave planning consultants related to the comp plan updates.

So this is Dominic Marlow, one of the planners on the project.

I'm wearing my name tag today because I got called Derek at a public meeting last night. So Dominic Marlow with Grape. I'm on the planning and urban design team. We were hired by the village to update your comprehensive plan. And I have a brief presentation for you all with an interim update on the community survey, which is still active. I believe this is the window I want to share. And before I get into this, I'll just talk a little bit about where we're at with the process, although I do think there is a slide on that.

Can I go full screen?

Great. OK. So it's nice to meet you all. I don't think I've met any of you in person besides Aaron. But like I said, I'm a planner and urban designer with GRAIF. We do comprehensive plans all across the region. It's one of my favorite things to do. It's that one time every 10 years that communities take a big picture look at the vision and the direction they're moving in. get an understanding of all the data that's accumulated over those 10 years, how your populations changed, how your land use and transportation networks have evolved, what's going on with your utilities systems and your public services, and what direction the community wants to continue to move forward in. It's an important legal basis for your planning and zoning decisions. You make sure that they're all consistent with your comprehensive plan when you move forward with things. And so it's an exciting time to make sure that there is alignment and a clear, transparent direction that their community is excited to be moving in. And part of that process is engaging with your community. And we've gotten to meet a lot of your residents and community members talking about what excites them about the future of Cottage Grove. And we're continuing to do that through this process. So I'm gonna give an overview of the project, where we're at in the schedule, talk a little bit about the engagement to date, I might have Aaron describe a little bit of that as well with some of the events that he was able to attend that I was not personally. And then some next steps and where we're moving after this. I've also got these business cards with the QR code to the community survey. If you haven't taken it yet or you want to share it with anybody, they're on the front desk, front counter. I'll put them back there when I'm done. But I've got those today as well if anybody wants them. All right. So... For anybody who's new to the comprehensive planning process, I kind of just described it, but the comprehensive plan is a long-term document that focuses on a roughly 20-year horizon for all of your local decisions about land use, housing, transportation, utilities, economic development, natural resource preservation, and management. It's a high level document, so it doesn't focus on saying when this happens, you make this decision, but it's really about establishing broad principles and intent and setting a general direction that can give you a foundation for decision making when you get into granular day-to-day decisions. In Wisconsin, comprehensive planning is mandatory for all municipalities who are incorporated, and they have to have certain elements in their comprehensive plan. Many communities go above and beyond these eight required elements, or nine required elements, sorry. which are listed out in the bullet points. I won't go over each of those one by one. Some of the most, usually biggest focus, because they tend to apply to a lot of day-to-day decision-making, tends to relate to land use, housing, and transportation. I'd say the other ones come up a little bit less frequently. Economic development can be bigger for some communities than others. But the land use is oftentimes the biggest focus of a comprehensive plan, and then with other things sort of filtering into that. SOME COMMUNITIES HAVE OTHER CHAPTERS FOR THINGS LIKE SUSTAINABILITY OR SMART GROWTH OR THEY MIGHT BREAK THOSE UP INTO SEPARATE PLAN DOCUMENTS. AND YOU MAY ALSO HAVE OTHER PLANS THAT HAVE BEEN ADOPTED IN YOUR COMMUNITY THAT HAVE BEEN ADOPTED INTO YOUR COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. SO YOU MAY FOR EXAMPLE ADOPT A PARK PLAN AND THEN SAY WE'RE GOING TO ADOPT THIS AS A CHAPTER OF MY COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. The comprehensive plan is sometimes more than just the document itself. It can involve other plans. And when you make them officially part of your comprehensive plan, that has additional authority sometimes in decisions. I THINK THAT'S ALL I'LL SAY ON THAT. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE'RE DOING IN ADDITION TO THE BASE REQUIREMENTS COMPREHENSIVE PLAN IS A FOCUS ON A VISION FOR THE VILLAGE CENTER AND DOWNTOWN AREA. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WAS ENVISIONED IN THE PREVIOUS COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. WE'RE TAKING THIS TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH SOME ADDITIONAL DETAIL. THERE'S SOME TAX INCREMENT FINANCING THAT'S GOING ON WITH SOME AREA. gonna work to create a high level vision for a master plan for that and move that to the next step. That was one of the things you guys asked for when you hired out for this project and we're really excited to provide a vision for that in collaboration with you all and I will say we've done a bunch of downtown master plans for areas that have no downtown, areas that have had established downtowns for over 100 years and it's just a really exciting process and so I'm really excited for all of you guys. Right now, we are in the sort of second phase on the timeline on the right, summer slash winter 2026, fall 2026 as well, with the community engagement phase. We've done a lot of inventory and analysis. We've collected a lot of data. We kind of know what you guys look like by the numbers at this point, and we've begun to meet your community, and we're gonna get into some things like interviews and focus groups. as well. We've identified some initial opportunities and we've begun to run some of those past year community members at some events in the community survey and we've gotten some really great feedback and so I'm really excited to share that feedback with you all. Before I get into the survey data, some engagement that we've done to date is first we were at your community night out. This was our first in-person event. We set up a tent and had a pretty decent turnout from people coming over, especially lots of kids who were really interested in finding themselves on the big mat and telling us, you know, where do they live? And the parents come over, and then we trap them. We say, hey, tell us about what you want to see in the community because your kid's stuck here coloring on our map, so now you've got to talk to us. Had a lot of really great conversations a lot of new families have come to the area and wanted to Set put down roots in Cottage Grove, and I wasn't at the event personally, but I heard some really great feedback We also shared some fun facts about how the community's been growing what that growth has looked like I don't know if if Aaron there's any specific experience at that event that you were at that you'd like to share or

You know, the kids definitely jumped out. It was great to see how interested they were in the map and they were very good at finding their homes. Like they kind of started with their school and followed their route home. And yeah, and that was a good way to get the parents involved too. And we did have those cards at the event and handed out a lot of those as well.

Yeah, so I guess the next generation of planning commissioners is always ready to take your spot once you're ready to retire from the commission. So you guys will be in good hands long term. And yeah, after the event, we got about 40 survey responses. We've continued to get well over 100 at this point. and we're continuing to collect responses. We also hosted an open house. This was really focusing on presenting that data we've collected and those high-level issues and opportunities and getting feedback from the community in an opportunity for people to engage with us one-on-one as staff too. talk through those, answer questions, hear people's positions in more of a public format. We had an interactive slideshow where we collected some feedback from individuals. We didn't get a ton of turnout. There were about three board members and eight to 10 community members who showed up during the event. So we usually like to tackle engagement from a broad variety of approaches Some are going to stick, some are not. So that pop-up event was more successful in this case. Sometimes it's the other way around. We'll get more people at open houses. And we've got some other engagement strategies. We've got a great online presence for this. So I will say it was still a great opportunity for us to engage with the folks where this was the best way for them to engage, show up at an open house and engage deeply with us in just a couple of hours. And all of this information is also posted online. So we've been able to get feedback online with a form. It's the exact same content that was at the open house. So people basically have a similar interaction. They just can't have that one-on-one time with us as the consultant. After that, we ended up with another 60 survey responses. That did coincide with some, I think, online push to get people to engage with this line. So it's not necessarily because of the open house, but it coincided with that. So the community survey as of yesterday had, or not yesterday, I think this was maybe two days ago. Oh, September 4th. So it was about five days ago. Had about 140 responses. That's about 1.5% of your population. As a percent of your population, that's great. Way higher response rate than we usually get at this point than most communities. And we're going to continue to shoot for even more. So great job. I'd say if we can get to 200, it'll be really a great sample size for your community. And that's really great to see, especially for a community that's growing as quickly as Cottage Grove. It's really useful to get... broad spectrum of responses because you want to be able to be confident that what you heard during the survey was actually reflective of what your community wants to see. I'd say at this point we're on track to have reflective survey results.

Do you and everybody else in the village will be getting a postcard reminding you to take the survey?

Yes, sending out postcards. It's going to be open for a couple more weeks still, so plenty of time. Don't forget to SHARE IT WITH EVERYBODY YOU KNOW THAT IS A COMMUNITY MEMBER. THIS IS SOME DEMOGRAPHIC DATA ABOUT THOSE WHO TOOK THE SURVEY. SO THE AGE BAND IS A PRETTY DECENT BELL CURVE. LOTS OF PEOPLE IN THE 35 TO 44-YEAR-OLD AGE GROUP WHICH IS ALSO WHO WE WOULD GENERALLY EXPECT IN THE YOUNG FAMILY DEMOGRAPHIC. LARGELY HOUSEHOLDS WITH CHILDREN BUT STILL DECENT REPRESENTATION FROM HOUSEHOLDS WITHOUT CHILDREN OR WITH ADULT DEPENDENTS. Most people indicated they lived in the village, but there were some representation from business owners or people who just visit. People were allowed to select multiple responses, so this could be people who live here. and also own a business, but it could also just people who only own a business. And if any commissioners are interested in us filtering this data to here, hey, I really want to know what the business owners had to say. I really want to know X. We are happy to filter this data and share it to you through that lens. Just let us know what perspective you want to hear. If you want to see what did it look like just for the families, just for the people with kids, that's an easy thing for us to do. So let us know. SOME HIGH-LEVEL RESPONSES THAT WE'VE HEARD. SOME OF THE BIGGEST THEMES WERE HEARING SOME DESIRE FOR MANAGING RESIDENTIAL DENSITY, NOT REALLY INCREASING IT TOO MUCH, BUT REALLY FOCUSING ON INCREASING WALKABILITY DESPITE NOT GOING TOO FAR DOWN A RESIDENTIAL DENSITY PATH. SO THAT WAS FEEDBACK WE'VE HEARD REINFORCED OVER AND OVER AGAIN AS A GENERAL THEME. THERE'S STILL TIME FOR THAT TO Change we're still only halfway through the survey, but that's that's one thing that really is apparent when you go through the survey results And then there's also Certain types of development that we really asked we asked about a whole bunch of types of development and we got a lot of different responses where people were okay with some density and some small some smaller scale developments and we're getting some good feedback about what how that represents community character as well and and I'll dive into some of that specific data right now. So we started by asking people about what issues and opportunities they see in the community. We got a lot of positive feedback that the community is managing the parks well, safety is great, events are really great, services and schools are all really great. Some mixed feedback regarding commercial and retail and eating options that there's not as much of it and that there could be more opportunities to expand commercial presence in the village. and some negative responses in comparison to other categories. I'd say nothing, the only one that got a majority negative response was quality of development. You can see is that the top one over 50% rated that as two or one star. And then also some negative perceptions of the quality of recent multifamily development was also received. Most people, a strong majority or over 50% would recommend Cottage Grove as a place to live and just under 50% would recommend it as a place to do business. We got some, oh, interrupt me at any point also. Feel free to, if you have any questions or want me to elaborate. We've also, I've got a lot more slides that I'm not planning to go into with more data. So if anything sparked questions, feel free. Otherwise, I'm just gonna keep on truckin'. Transportation, so we focused on the nine required elements by the state. Transportation is one of those required elements. We asked people, you know, how do you feel about traffic and parking? They said everything's going well right now. Certainly there's been some comments about specific targeted issues, but in general, not like a huge issue with congestion or parking being a big constraint at the moment. Lots of support for walkability, like I said, including bikeability. Mixed feedback when we ask people, like, do you want to see transit expanded? Do you want to see bike share expanded? Some said yes, some said no, so we're getting differing feedback on that. And then there wasn't really any support from people about adding a scooter share service or subsidized taxi services. So that's something that's very common for mid-sized communities in Wisconsin to pilot. And a lot of them have piloted them and stopped it. Some have piloted it and made it permanent. So it's a good thing, innovative practice that we wanted to see people's opinion on, even if we're not necessarily recommending it or not. In terms of utilities community facilities, we asked, which ones do you want to see? Which ones do you think we can maintain? Strongest responses were wanting to see things like a pool, a library, gathering space, indoor sports and kids facilities. Though there were also many people who said they just want to maintain or even reduce current services to focus on making sure that village resources aren't being strained too much.

Can I ask a question there, actually? Yeah. So I noticed on when you were providing the breakouts by respondents, the two largest demographics were folks who had had a zero to five year tenure in the village and then 20 plus. Yes. Did you see a... a pretty big gulf between what the zero to five we're looking for and what the 20 plus we're looking for, or is it an equal?

I would have to re-look at the data. I think I would probably have some assumptions about how that would align, but I think this is largely also just indicative of the fact that your population growth is very recent and so that is actually probably reflective of your general population distribution, as you have a lot of people who have lived here for a long time and you have a lot of newcomers. Though in terms of what they're asking for specifically, no, I didn't filter the data and look at that yet, but I certainly can. And we can provide the data to you guys as well, and you'd be happy to just filter it yourself.

I did just email out the copy of the presentation if you want to follow along.

Um... Cool. Moving on to agriculture, natural and cultural resources. So I think specifically we're talking about agricultural land when it comes to your community. And this is definitely going to be a major focus of steering development in the long term. We asked people, how do we think we should be managing existing farmland? We asked that question in a couple different ways to make sure we've got an accurate response from people people generally said you know We should respect farm farmers property owners of farmlands property rights to develop their property But not an overwhelming majority said that just just slightly more people said that then didn't say that But then also a strong preference for strategies that protect high quality farmland, but once again not a complete majority of responses a plurality of responses In terms of economic development and land use, there were, you know, we asked people, in general, Cottage Grove is perceived as a bedroom community. People commute out. There are a decent amount of people who commute in. There are very few people who live and work in Cottage Grove as a percentage of your community. That's not uncommon. But certainly it's something that we want to make sure that people understand, and if they have any feedback on it, we want to hear it. And people did say that they would like to see more white-collar work. For existing residents, demographically as a population, you have more of a white-collar employed population than a blue-collar employed population. So that's why that's phrased in that way. There's also a preference for more small scale development at a variety density. People really like the idea of a diversity and a mix of development rather than focusing too much on just like big monotonous one type of development projects. I will say that that data on the employment of your community, we're looking at 2024 data. We do not have the most recent data. So your newest employers, we don't have data on how many of them live in your community yet. We're gonna be catching up to that data. I don't think during this planning phase we're gonna be able to get super accurate data as to your newest largest employers where all of those individuals are living, but I think it's safe to say you all probably have a better sense of that because you've been the ones reviewing your newest housing developments. You probably have an understanding of where those rents are at or what those home prices are at and maybe who would be affording those and who's moving into those. Maybe those developers have actually told you what their market studies have had. I know you guys have added a lot of housing recently. In terms of physical sustainability, we are specifically going to be adding a strong focus in the plan on physical sustainability. This was something else that you guys asked for as a part of this contract. So we asked people this in a lot of different ways and people really wanted to make sure that you have a strong transparency about the fiscal impacts of new development, meaning how much taxes and services do they consume versus how much tax base do they provide and what's that balance and what are the trade-offs between that and in general, when testing questions about, there are many economic development reasons to embrace residential density from a fiscal perspective, so we wanted to test those in general. Most fiscally responsible strategies do focus on making more efficient use of infrastructure on a smaller area of land. THOUGH NOT EVERY COMMUNITY HAS TO MOVE THAT DIRECTION AND ALSO THAT'S NOT THE ONLY STRATEGY THAT WORKS AND THERE WAS A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF RESISTANCE TO THAT STRATEGY. THAT'S IMPORTANT TO KNOW BECAUSE WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT STRATEGIES ARE GOING TO BE ACCEPTABLE TO MOVE IN. IN TERMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY, PEOPLE GENERALLY very positive overall, pretty overwhelming support for sustainable features in new developments. What those look like, we'll continue to explore. We have a bunch of different sustainability strategies that I think are compatible with your community. IN TERMS OF FOCUSING ON THE VILLAGE CENTER SPECIFICALLY, PEOPLE REALLY LIKE THE IDEA OF PUBLIC SPACE. PEOPLE REALLY WANTED FAMILY FOCUSED ENVIRONMENT TO BE SORT OF THE MAJOR FOCUS AND MAKE SURE THAT THE WHOLE THING IS ACCESSIBLE TO SENIORS. AND THEN THERE WAS A DECENT AMOUNT OF QUESTIONS LIKE WHY ARE YOU ASKING ABOUT THE VILLAGE CENTER, WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE VILLAGE CENTER, A LOT OF ANXIETY AROUND THAT. SO WE DO THINK THAT AS WE MOVE FORWARD WE'LL DO A A BETTER JOB AND WE WOULD RECOMMEND THAT ALL VILLAGE COMMUNICATIONS BE REALLY COGNIZANT OF EXPLAINING WHY WE'RE LOOKING AT THE VILLAGE CENTER AND PROVIDING THAT CONTEXT AND MAKING SURE TO EDUCATE PEOPLE ALONG THE WAY. AND JUST IN CASE ANYBODY HERE IS ASKING THAT QUESTION OR IN THE AUDIENCE OR ON THE COMMISSION, LIKE I SAID EARLIER, THE EXISTING COMPREHENSIVE PLAN DOES HAVE A FOCUS ON MOVING IN THIS DIRECTION OF THE VILLAGE CENTER AND SO IT IS AN ESTABLISHED DIRECTION OF THE VILLAGE. has, you can find information about that on chapter five of the comprehensive plan, pages 41 through 44. So we're going to close the survey on September 25th at midnight. We are going to continue providing updates on the stages of the process on the project website, ways for people to get involved, what the status of drafting and adoption is. Once drafts become available, those will be posted online. And we're going to be scheduling a village center design workshop very soon in the fall. That has not been scheduled yet, so I'm sure you guys will be kept abreast of that once that is scheduled. We're also going to start stakeholder interviews. I believe there's a discussion about what those are going to look like. We got some feedback about the stakeholder groups you guys wanted to, your community wanted us to engage with. That's a time for us to really focus in with a small group of people and dive deep into questions and really, really understand what the lived experience of individuals from different perspectives in your community or the business community and development community who wants to invest in Cottage Grove thinks will work the best. And then as a part of our project schedule, there's also two more plan commission meetings such as this to discuss specific plan elements and we'll provide more details about what that looks like in the future. If you want to go to the website, there's the QR code right there if you don't have it saved already. And I'll open up for any questions. And I've got some more slides with additional data if you specifically want to really dive deep right now, we can do that.

Yeah, open it up to questions.

Go ahead, you answered my questions, thank you.

You're welcome.

Easy. Anyone have a real question? No, I think this is this is going great. So you just had said you know 100. That postcard out on Monday. And we still have about two weeks of open until the survey closes. You said like 200-ish is an appropriate sample size.

I think if you guys get 200, you'll be in really good shape. I mean, that's about 2% of your community. Yeah. be in great shape. I mean, I think you're already in great shape with 140. But the more, the merrier. And I think there might be some demographics that are still somewhat underrepresented. So the postcard will do a better job of maybe evening that out a little bit.

Yeah, I think it'll be interesting once you get all of the data to start filtering out by the demographics and then seeing how if the trends are still the same within the questions. And then I did have a question how you were, because there's some open-ended questions, too, where people can put comments in. And I was just wondering how you were

coding those yep so we'll typically read through those um there have been some really exciting ways of being able to use ai nowadays as well to just be able to like parse through large amounts of long answer feedback and get general trends and then be able to get a broader perspective on it because even if you do read each one individually it can sort of run through your brain but uh So we take a varied approach. We will, you know, read every comment. We'll also share every comment anonymously. Like we will take off people's names who make the comments and we'll, you know, just have the exact text of every single comment posted for you guys. And then I think we will sort of HOW DO I EXPLAIN THIS? AS WE GO THROUGH THE SPECIFIC COMMENTS, WE WILL USE THAT TO GENERATE IDEAS FOR PLAN ELEMENTS AND CHANGES IN THE CODE. CHANGES IN THE PLAN. TYPICALLY IN A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATE, ANYWHERE FROM 25% to 90% of your existing plan will just be carried forward, depending on how big of a shift you guys want to make and how much needs to be updated. And a lot of generating ideas will come from the longer responses that residents provide in long comments. Sometimes out of 100, you get one or two that are really incredible. uh... work that some communities members of put into generate some awesome ideas and recommendations that are like a great perspective on what your community uh... needs of the time you might get a business owners of hammocks and experiencing the specific thing there's this thing happening right now in the business district means that i have this big idea we say hey that's a great idea we probably would recommend something like that if we had thought of it uh... so uh... sometimes those ideas get elevated and put in the plan other times they get sort of OR SOMETIMES IT'S JUST EDUCATING US IN TERMS OF PROVIDING PERSPECTIVE AND SAYING, WELL, YOU ASKED THE QUESTION THIS WAY, BUT I WANT TO PROVIDE A RESPONSE BECAUSE I DON'T THINK THAT MY SELECTION OF THE ANSWER IS GIVING ME THE FULL PERSPECTIVE. SO IT HELPS EDUCATE US. IT ACTS AS A RESOURCE THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PLAN UPDATE PROCESS, AND IT CAN CONTINUE TO BE A RECORD THAT YOU LEAN ON IN THE FUTURE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED DURING THIS UPDATE.

Would you mind backing up one slide? When there were, there we go, for the Village Center, were folks asking questions about the Village Center project or about the ConPlan update project?

The questions were focused on, not on why are we updating the comprehensive plan, it's why is there a Village Center development visioning process as a part of the comprehensive plan. understanding it's your opinion was it more curiosity in terms of the questions or concern the questions um i'm not sure necessarily um i wonder if we have i don't i think those would be long answer questions so i don't think i'm going to have anything on it specifically here i mean we do have like very specific feedback about how people rated different opportunities for the village center. So you could see that data right here. But in terms of the specific concerns, I think it was a little bit of anxiety being expressed around you know, what kind of development are you going to be doing in the village center? And we do test things. I mean, as you can see, 49% of people disagreed or strongly disagreed with housing in the village center. And so even asking that question can get people nervous. So why are you proposing housing in the village center? Well, no one's proposing housing. But I understand the anxiety by even seeing it. So that's a pretty common reaction that we get, is we're testing ideas. We don't want to get. too ahead of ourselves without asking the tough questions that might have tough answers. And we're willing to take the heat for you guys in that process to make sure we have an accurate understanding of what people wanna see in the community.

I think this is good preliminary feedback though for staff too that we need internally to do a little bit more communication on what this project, like the rationale behind the project too for Village Center.

I mean, there's proactive communication and then there's also just like every time you talk about it, you just you always preface it with here's why. And I'd say that's probably the only thing that we engaged around that had that anxiety around it. So pretty easy to make sure that we do that moving forward. So I'd say, yeah, kind of a common thing that we would we would see in a community with with not as much of a downtown area.

Any other questions about the presentation and where we are at?

I guess when does the mailer go out? Is it?

Monday.

Monday? Okay. Great. Hopefully we'll get a nice boost in responses.

Usually it's the most effective strategy.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a great, yeah, the best way to reach everyone in the village. Right. Thank you.

We've done surveys before. Do we still have access to prior data and able to look at trends as well? Is that going to be part of the analysis maybe or? Just even internally?

Yeah, we did a 2024 community survey that was developed in-house.

Yeah, we did one for 2020-ish. We may even have older ones than that.

We did a library survey, and we had 816 responses.

It would be helpful to go through all of those from a trend and a, you know. Because you had a good point with that sort of hockey stick of new people and people who've been around longer and some of the things will shift. And I don't mind questions getting like itchier feedbacks. I mean, that's how it's being presented. And I would be cautious in creating a glowing question to drive a specific answer, right? You don't want that, and I don't have any words to say it, but it's a data point. If it is a communication issue, then we can work on that, but I also like the raw intensity of people's comments too, so it's good.

You do have a character limit on the survey, so if people want to write extra, can they just email that?

Um, so the feedback form, so first I could remove the character limit if you think that would be helpful. I'm happy to do that. Probably. Um, but the feedback forms as well, separate feedback forms, they could also just use the feedback form. Um, I'm not sure if there's character limit, but I, uh, tomorrow morning I'll just remove all the character limits.

That's easy.

I think we probably listed an email on the homepage. We usually list some sort of contact information on the homepage. So that would also be an option.

I think those would go to me. Excuse me? I think those emails would go to me.

I would assume so. I just didn't want to speak out of turn.

Okay. If there's no other comments about the presentation, we can move on to the focus group. So there's a memo in that kind of outlies kind of next steps for developing some targeted feedback.

Yeah, so this was part of our scope to have three different focus groups. So we're just looking for a little bit of input on kind of what the theme of each of those groups should be. And I don't know if you want to explain a little how those kind of work the kind of conversations you have, that kind of thing.

Yeah, so typically, so this can go a bunch of different ways. Focus groups, like I said earlier, they're an opportunity for us to dive in deeper with subject matter experts or specific perspectives that we think are a really important perspective that may otherwise either be underrepresented or just not be fully fleshed out through the more shallow engagement processes. You take a survey for 10 minutes, show up to an open house, you maybe get some face-to-face time versus you get invited to have a one-on-one or a focus group interview with somebody who can dive in deeply to a specific subject and also have their responses be kept anonymous. So typically we will request that we at the very least get to engage with the commercial business community specifically large employers and Developers and other types of major investors in the community because we do want to understand If anything is being proposed that it is something that the actual investors are See as reasonable because we don't want to say oh you should build this huge waterpark and developers like I'm not gonna build a huge waterpark I want to build something that I'm going to make money off of, right? So we want to make sure there's some market alignment. So that's one of the major themes we tend to recommend to go into with focus groups. There could be either a sustainability or an equity or an advocacy focus for any specific issues you want to dive deep into. Oftentimes we'll engage with transportation advocates or people who are in environmental groups who specifically have concerns about YOUR WATERSHED OR LOCAL HABITAT PRESERVATION OR YOUR TREE CANOPY OR THINGS LIKE THAT IF WE WANT TO DIVE INTO MORE SUSTAINABILITY FOCUSED TOPICS. THERE MAY BE DEMOGRAPHICS WHO ARE NOT GOING TO BE WELL REPRESENTED THROUGH THE TYPICAL SURVEY PROCESS WHO ARE NOT LIKELY TO COME TO MEETINGS OR DON'T HAVE access to like internet and things like that so we may engage with sometimes like limited English speakers or older adults or youth in order to get their perspective if there's certain things that the village really wants to make sure that they're targeting those perspectives and the last one I'd say is we'll sometimes just talk to just a general cross-section of like residents homeowners renters and that is I think to align the broader communication of the plan with just like your typical everyday resident and make sure that they understand that we understand that the way we're communicating things is coming over well with your specific community members. Those are all different goals, and I think what's the most important is that whatever we identify a focus group for, we do want to have sort of a goal for what we're getting out of that group. It's more effective than just having generic questions to talk with a generic group of people with. That's kind of more the survey focus. So it's not intended to be a deeper version of the survey. It's really intended to be a deeper dive into a specific topic or area of focus that we really need to figure out as a part of this plan. Yeah, like whatever those specific topics are.

OK. So we have staff recommending kind of, we've got three groups we need to put together. Staff recommends residents, mix of renters and homeowners, businesses, various business across Cottage Grove, and then a mix of senior and youth.

I guess based on Dominic's comments, it's not just the who, but also maybe a more specific what that each of those groups would talk about. So if there's something you, in particular, would want to hear from those groups. And it doesn't have to be these groups either. It's just what's suggested.

So looking for direction from the commission.

Can I go?

Yeah. OK.

I don't like this. Okay, I'll just go through the three bullets because I don't, I'm not sure, because it's a discuss, discuss, yeah, discuss and consider, so I'm not sure how this is going to word out. So the first ones is residents, eight members, mix of renters and homeowners. I think we're also missing residential property owners, and you mentioned developers. So I think in that piece, we need to capture, especially these large multi-use buildings, their marketing structure is why Cottage Grove why here and not some of the other local communities and I think that that businesses various size and location when I think of businesses I'm thinking more commercial so I don't I don't know if it's tied into there or we don't resident even with the park it's it's a different it's a different mindset than somebody right so he's awesome And then the other one, youth senior, eight members, four seniors, four youths. And then I kind of was like, why just four seniors? They're residents too, so they're part of the upper group. So we're pulling out. high schoolers so I'm gonna make up numbers 15 to 19 ish you know we get four of those and then then there's those go you know here a little bit and then a little bit longer but that's that's not their age group and then we have the seniors it's it's an eclectic mix it's a it's a great I bet the conversation would be amazing like with four high school students oh no no I'm all that like it would be very interesting I'm just, the seniors are residents, so we're pulling them out as separate is what I'm looking at. Yeah, I want the youth, right, but they're also residents, so they're actually part of bullet number one. And so how we're slicing this group I think is important to make sure we are getting that proper depth and that we're not pigeonholing ourselves in places and that we're missing some opportunities there as well. The number one thing that I'll always gripe about is the word families. Get the word family there. I want the families. They're trying to raise their kids. They're trying to do things. And so, okay, we got a resident and they're all the exact same demographic. So we broke out seniors. Let's break out more demographics. But we can't break it out to the umpteenth degree. So I don't know the good mix. That's just my thoughts.

So we're looking for like a pool of eights to talk about a specific topic, right? So like you said, like residence is the first pool of eights. But it could, like the livability, maybe affordability. Yeah. aspect is what they could talk about or housing or something. So you've got homeowners, you have renters, but then you also mentioned maybe a developer that just put in, is planning on putting in a subdivision and perhaps the developer or owner of one of the large multifamily complexes.

I would say people that are here. We would not want future people, right? We want, I don't want a future developer. We want people who are here working, right?

I was just thinking like what we've already just approved.

That one's fine. But, like, the one down to the south that's, like, they're all wishy-washy. They're here today. There's another one tomorrow. There's nothing there right now. Yeah, I know. But, like, yeah, yeah. No, no.

I'm looking to, like, hit someone.

Yeah, they're here.

Yes, but Juniper Fields is here.

They're here.

Coming. Does that make sense for, like, the residence group?

Okay, how do you... I guess, how do you write that so we're capturing it as a consider to make it... Because it's the motion somewhere in there, right? Because that's where I'm just, like... It's very broad and I wanna make sure we give the staff leeway to get who they need, but also ensure that we get a demographic that makes sense. I wouldn't know how to work that.

I think it's direction, staff direction.

I appreciate that. It depends on who you ask. I was taking notes here for three different groups. I think it'd be great to get business leaders who have kind of that economic interest in the village but are not residents. And then residents who do not have an economic interest, so they don't operate or own a business here. And then a third group that I think would be really interesting to hear from would be It's kind of a conglomeration, but I listed public works, the fire, EMS, law enforcement, kind of those special interest groups that you named, but then also the utilities. So water, power, and what is it that they're seeing in communities? Because I know Cottage Grove is facing an energy issue as we continue to expand. So if there's thoughts or insights from them, it might be really good to pull it out. So as we're putting together a comprehensive plan, all of these different segments. And so to the question on how do we identify the residents, are we limited to eight? Does it have to be constrained to eight? Because I think your point is great of families, people who live here representing the entire population range, but folks that are invested in the community.

Yes, I think a couple things related to that. There's a utilities and community facilities chapter, so we would talk to the fire department and EMS and all that as part of that chapter anyway, so they will have that input. Yeah, and I guess I'll let you address the eight. I know you want them to be focused, hence the name focus group.

So if we invite eight, we'll probably get six to show up, maybe four. I would say I personally don't like managing a group larger than six. I'll do eight, that's fine. But in a one hour session, you're not gonna hear very much from every person. Maybe some people might just be sitting quietly in the meeting and say, do they feel like it's a valuable use of their time? It can be very difficult in a virtual setting to manage that many people. We have discussed potentially doing one hybrid or in person, but in general, it can become unwieldy to manage a focus group any larger than that. I think the topic areas are what's the most helpful feedback for me, at least. I don't know if this helps you guys make your motion. But the livability and affordability are things I heard, and your sort of long-term fiscal sustainability, which we will talk to the various government staff. And then economic development is not something I heard, but that's something that we talked about from the perspective of something we could talk to high schoolers about in terms of what would make you move back to Cottage Grove after you maybe go to college or maybe not leave off Cottage Grove in the first place. What do you want to see in the community? What would make it attractive for you to live in and put down roots? Because you do have a dearth in your population in the sort of 18 to 34 age group. which is maybe not a problem, but it's definitely potentially an opportunity. And then also just the business friendliness and what is it like to operate a business and what problems do you experience operating a business in cottage growing. Those are all great topics to engage in. And then in terms of talking to current multifamily property owners, sometimes the developers own their own properties. Continental properties for example they tend to retain their properties for a really long time and continue to manage them We have relationship with them and so we'd be happy to talk with them about that kind of thing Sometimes developers develop they go through the public rule process then they sell to a manager and the manager only knows the day-to-day operations I don't have much experience talking with property managers, but if you think there's useful feedback They have and you guys have relationships with them. I think I'd be interested to maybe have those conversations I don't know what you think about that I'm asking you specifically about the idea, yeah?

I think it'd be good. I mean, I think it's one of the biggest things that this, developers come in here and they'll ask us, what do you think questions with no discuss and considers, right? I see this property, I wanna do this thing. And so they come to here and it'd be good, I think, to have them early in stages as well. Because when they come to us and they ask us, they're talking about very specific properties and what got them to the decision to come to Cottage Grove meeting. And I think that would be, so that it's a potential future person that we would wanna talk to or people who are already developing and why continue to develop. So it would be good. As I'm reading through and hearing it, it makes a lot of sense, right? Okay, so three meetings. I'm starting to get my head around it. Sorry, I was probably more behind in my head. You're saying you can only handle four. That makes sense. Maybe six. That totally makes sense. We've all been in, well, we have a lot of people in here, and this is fun sometimes. Totally makes sense. So, like, would you, is the vision that, like, hey, we're going to send out 50 applications ask for feedback and then and then the other option is also you mentioned there's long format answers coming back in the surveys so if that data you know that individual isn't sanitized or they offer their name that potentially would be a good target because they've already engaged us with a long format answer and they may be interested in being on a committee because you're right If you ask for eight, you get one. So it's that percentage, right? We have 5,000 mailers going out, you're hoping for a 2% return. So if you ask eight, you're gonna get one to two people show up.

You're gonna end up getting who you get.

We can try and do demographics all day long. It's who's gonna show up at the door that day. So what's the process to flush that out or is staff work that out?

I would recommend not focusing too much on the process and logistics of getting them scheduled. I think your staff should be able to handle that and support our need to be able to organize those and make them happen. It happens definitely every single time. It's based on the existing relationships you guys have. I'd say cold outreach is not common because it's typically more helpful to reach out to people you already have somewhat of a relationship with or at least people who are a part of an organization you have a relationship with, for example, if you reach out to the school, if you reach out to a senior center, for example, like that. Chamber of Commerce. Yeah, but was there another part of your question not related to logistics?

So you're going to ask, so we've narrowed down a smaller group, usual suspects, we can call them. There's 24, you're going to send out 24 and say, hey, we're going to meet on, we're looking at a Tuesday and a Thursday, making words up, workshop. Please send in, please reply if interested. Is that what you're envisioning? Are you going to just try and target only the six that you want, or?

Yes, I was envisioning, and talked to Cindy a little bit about it, just treating it like any other committee where we pick the number and then have the board approve the people.

I've recently run three different sets of stakeholder interview focus groups, and all of them had roughly 50% of the people reached out to ended up attending. So I'd recommend reaching out to twice as many as you want to hold.

So I heard that you said you're going to run it as a commission. President nominates, board will approve. That's good control. I mean, that's normal.

Yeah, I think. But I think tonight, if the plan commission can give a recommendation on the three types of focus groups is what we're looking for tonight. I think we've talked about residents and homeowners. That seems pretty fleshed out. We want that one to be a mix of renters, homeowners, developers that are already here. I heard business. I would probably just work with Britt and identify all different types of business owners here in the village and then propose that to the village board and come back with the list of names and directly target them and then maybe do a little micromanaging to make sure people show up. Um, so I feel like those two buckets, I think, are we kind of in agreement that that's, those are definitely two groups we want. And then the third group we had, you know, brainstormed and talked about the senior youth mix and how does the commission feel about that? Or do you want something like sustain, like experts in sustainability or do you want,

I like the... Something else. I like the used to. I mean, I think there's always that Eagle Scout looking for something, and I don't know if there's a community or something. I mean, you had them here the other day, Alvin, with the Pledge of Allegiance and stuff, and I think that was...

They just show up.

They just show up.

I'm like, thank you.

They always want to do stuff, right? I mean, so I think it's a great opportunity.

But I think I have the contacts around the community that I can contact those people, and then they can give me lists of people that we can target.

I think that would be a great way to get... They're going to be very engaged.

And I would talk to April at Dremlin Residences and say, who are your most engaged seniors? And I would like their names.

Like Historical Society, we can reach out to.

We have coffee. And then think about, I recommend, is there anybody who's going to be like, why wasn't I invited to this? Always. I need to be. And do you actually want to? Because oftentimes those are... Yeah, you understand what I'm saying.

What do you mean I wasn't invited to the youth team? Yeah, there's going to be.

So are those kind of the three focus groups? Nodding heads? Okay. So this is a discuss and consider, but it sounds like there's a lot of direction here, but it aligns pretty much with the staff recommendation. So I'd entertain a motion.

I'd make a motion to approve the comprehensive plan update focus groups as outlined.

Second.

Heidi and Alex. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Stay in motion carries. All right. Future agenda items.

I was going to say thank you for coming, Derek.

I mean, Dominic. Sounds like a big list for next meeting.

Next meeting is on the same schedule, the November 11th, second Wednesday. Okay.

October 14th is our next meeting.

Thank you.

Potentially a business concept presentation. I think there's a zero lot line application out there. Hydrate is working on some stuff that may or may not come through at that point. Those are probably the main ones at this point.

All right, number 13. Motion to adjourn. Second. Alex and Heidi, non-debatable. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thanks.