Planning Commission - Regular Meeting
The Planning Commission elected new leadership, with Commissioner Sawish becoming Chair and Commissioner Dreckman becoming Vice Chair. The commission also discussed the annual report to Town Council, focusing on potential additions and future goals, including drafting bylaws and a work plan.
About this meeting
- Government Body
- Planning Commission
- Meeting Type
- Planning Commission
- Location
- Erie, CO
- Meeting Date
- June 3, 2026
Transcript
145 sections
Evening and welcome to the June 3rd, 2026 regular meeting of the Town of Erie Planning Commission. The time is now 6.30 p.m., and I'm calling this meeting to order. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Will the secretary please call roll?
Commissioner Booth.
Present.
Commissioner Lee.
Present.
Commissioner Dregman. Present. Commissioner Sawish.
Aye from town hall.
Commissioner Schutz.
Here.
Vice Chair Broaddus. Present. Chair Hemphill.
Here.
We have a quorum.
Thank you. We have an agenda before us this evening. Does staff have any changes to the agenda? No changes. Who would like to make a motion?
Motion. Second.
Second by Booth. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion passes unanimously. This brings us to approval of the May 20th, 2026 planning commission meeting minutes. Do we have any changes or requests to make a motion?
Move to approve.
Second.
That was Broadus and Dreckman on the second. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion passes unanimously. This brings us to the public comments portion of the meeting. This is for public comments intended for items not already scheduled on the agenda to be discussed. Is there anyone in the waiting room signed up or in the audience?
I do have one signed up. It is Sam Badger, so we're going to allow him to talk.
One second. Let me go through my script and then we'll... So public comment is limited to three minutes per person. When you are called upon, you are required to state your name and place of residence for the record. If you are appearing on behalf of a person or organization, please provide the name and place of residence of the person or organization you are representing. Public comment is not an interactive question and answer forum, but rather a time for you to state your comments on a particular item or issue. You will be given an audible warning when you have 20 seconds remaining. At the three-minute mark, the light will turn red for in-person, and I will ask that you finish your final sentence. If you are giving comments virtually, we will ask that you wrap up and mute your microphone. You may resume watching the meeting or disconnect at that time.
And we'll go to virtual.
Hi, can everybody hear me? Yes. Great, thanks. My name is Sam Badger. I live in the Parkdale neighborhood at 1324 Brookfield Place, Erie, Colorado, 800226. So yeah, I'm here to talk to you today about the Parkdale school situation and how it fits in with our parks. So going back to last year, a bunch of us neighbors realized that we were kind of lacking in parks. We went back and forth with the town and developer and everything. And it sounds like we got our open space allocated near our neighborhood. It's not really usable by humans. It's a wetland, which is fine, I guess. the developer paid a fee in lieu of a park dedication. And then they, you know, we were told we were going to be given a school, like the Parkdale school. And as we were talking about the park situation, the town's stance was like, well, you know, it's okay. You guys don't have a neighborhood park going in in your park because you that school is going to be going in and you'll be able to use their fields and stuff. And so that was like a big, Negotiating factor when we were going back when residents were going back and forth with the developer and the town was that we'd be getting the school. And then I think just a few months ago, I haven't seen the official communication. I'm trying to find out more about it, but I hear now that. The school and Parkdale is being delayed. Potentially indefinitely, um, I'm not sure what the story is there, but. I just wanted to point out that, um. You know, if that school isn't built, it leaves Parkdale both without. Without a neighborhood park without, like, a decent place to participate in any sport. It's like it within the neighborhood and it's a big neighborhood. And, you know, our, our wetlands are our open spaces wetlands. So. I know the developer paid this money, this fee in lieu of park dedication, which, of course, impacts the total cost of the neighborhood and is kind of included in our bonds that were taken out for the neighborhood. I guess it kind of just feels like the new residents in Parkdale are paying for other people's parks and not really being represented.
20 seconds that's all i have i'm done thank you thank you i don't have anyone else signed up but one other guest in the waiting room so if you would like to speak please raise your hand and we can call you into the meeting and no hands are raised okay
thank you um if you have any more specific questions that you'd like answered you can email planning erico.gov we won't really get into parks and fees and woes at this meeting right now but just for your information uh the we have two items on the agenda for general business again my goal is to have the meeting finished by 30. our first item is 2026 334 election of chair and vice chair of the planning commission the time is now 6 36 p.m so i sent out my procedure plan for this election for review yesterday i'm going to read through this plan go through it once in case you didn't have time to review it i'm going to read through it in full and then we can discuss if anybody would like to propose changes i'm following the planning on running this for both chair and then vice chair. I discussed it with staff and legal. They didn't have any issues with it. And I just found this in Robert's rules. It seemed like a good way to do it. The last election felt a little weird. So this is kind of the the route that i figured would make the most sense we'll start with the chair election after the chair is elected we'll do vice chair obviously the chair can't be vice chair process will be the same for both i plan to preside over both elections even if i'm not re-elected chair so if that's an issue for anyone we can talk about that at the end so the steps will go we'll open the florida nomination step one you don't need to be recognized to nominate anyone you don't need a second so just say your name and i nominate this person i will announce that commissioner being nominated just for the record so it's clear i'll ask if that nominated commissioner wants to be the chair or vice chair i think it's nice to want to be in that role technically we can elect anyone to be chair but you know um robert's rules allow us for speeches i don't plan on doing speeches from the nominating commissioner but again if we want to change that we can after all nominations were received i'll close the nomination with the phrase i'm closing nominations without objection if someone has an objection because i didn't give enough time to make a nomination just speak up and we'll have a nomination um for we'll be doing the ballot vote. So I created that sheet with all the names and the item or the position that we're filling and then the vote number in case we don't get a majority. I just wanted to mark vote number one, or if we get to a second round of voting, mark vote number two. Just so we don't get the papers mixed up as the secretary is counting. So that was the reasoning behind that. And again, I just threw all the names on there so we didn't have to scribble anything in. Staff will collect the ballots, count them, and then announce the outcome just with the commissioner name elected to the position that we're voting on and then the vote count that they received. We don't need to do the full vote breakdown if there's more than four votes for someone. But if there's not more than, there's fewer than four votes for someone, you'll announce that no commissioner has been selected and we'll do a re-vote. That'll just effectively clear all the nominations. So we'll go through the full nominating process just so it's clear that we do that. Those are my plans for the election.
Anyone have any comments or request to change?
actually just thought of something seeing as how everybody has ipads do you have pens there should be pins in front of us okay sure okay so we'll start with the chair election i'll open the floor to nominations um i nominate ben the current chair uh so that was vice chair brodus nominating chair hemp hill and i accept that nomination
I would like to nominate Commissioner Sawish.
I accept.
That was Commissioner Booth nominating Commissioner Sawish. Sounds like enough silence for me.
I am closing the nominations without objection.
Okay. Please fill out on the ballot, mark chair for this one, mark one in the top, and then your vote.
Kira, goodbye.
We didn't cue up the elevator music, so sorry about that.
Or the jeopardy music.
Oh, yeah.
And Chair Hemphill, did you want us to announce the votes, the numbers as well?
Just the number of votes that the winner received.
OK. So we have five total votes for Commissioner Sawish as chair.
So Commissioner Sawish will assume the role as chair for one year. Without objection, I'll continue to the vice chair election. I will open the floor to nominations for vice chair.
I would like to nominate Commissioner Druckmann.
We have a commissioner nominated by Commissioner Booth, and she accepted. And I'd like to nominate Vice Chair Broaddus. We have Vice Chair Broaddus accepted the nomination by Commissioner Hemphill. Anything else? OK. I'm closing the nominations without objection. We'll do a ballot vote. We already did that. So for this one, fill out vice chair, vote number one on the top, and then your vote for vice chair. Yeah. That'll be your role for next year. Get on that.
I'll bring my boom box. Okay.
I have five total votes for Commissioner Dreckman as vice chair.
Thank you. Commissioner Dreckman will assume the role of vice chair for one year. Chair Sawish, would you like to take over or should I continue presiding?
With the next item that we have coming up, I would prefer if Vice Chair Dreckman and myself were to lead the conversation, if you're fine with that.
Yeah, that's fine.
Thank you.
OK, so we do have one additional officer that needs to be elected. And I want to check with staff and deputy town attorney on this one. Per code, there are three positions that would need to have an election, the chair, vice chair, and a secretary. Obviously, I know that staff are the ones who generally will take all the notes and everything like that, but it is by code something that we are supposed to vote on. So I just want to real quickly, I want to have a moment for the deputy town attorney to corroborate that and verify that, yes, in fact, we are by code supposed to have a secretary possible.
Section 3-1-4A of the code does provide that each board or commission shall elect a chair, vice chair, and secretary from along its full membership. So there is a code requirement to elect a secretary, which I think the – Rules of procedure, I think, which predate the code, which was revised in November of 2025, also contemplates a secretary, and looks like the duties and responsibilities are consistent with what is in the code.
So obviously we have staff who does the secretary duties for us because of the nature of our order commission. I'm assuming, but by code, we're required to have a secretary as one of the officers of this body, correct?
By code, it does require a secretary to be elected from the body, yes. Okay.
So, um, I just want to confer with, uh, the commission up here. Does anybody have any objections to us also electing a secretary? Um, and question then becomes for deputy town attorney, whether or not we have to notice that since we are taking an official vote.
We did notice the election.
I'm just looking to see how the agenda was noticed. We did notice election of the positions or election of officers. Yeah, the notice or the agenda doesn't specifically reference a election of a secretary. Yeah, I would suggest that this is the, I think, I don't know the history of the code and whether a secretary was provided or required prior to November of 2025, but I would suggest that we notice at the next meeting, or notice for the next meeting an elected secretary at the next meeting.
Okay, I am fine with that. Does anybody have any objections to that?
What do you expect the role of the secretary to do?
I would assume that if there was the off chance that staff wasn't able to attend for whatever reason, that would be the individual to potentially take notes. I don't think we've ever had somebody from staff not in attendance for one of our meetings, as long as I can remember.
You're correct.
Okay. So please.
Sorry. On the, when we sign a vote, there's two signatures, right? Does the second one say where you usually sign now? Does that say secretary or does it say?
For resolutions, it does say secretary and it would have staff's name. Is that what you're asking me?
Well, except if we go this route, then we have the secretary's name.
That is a good item. I'm going to turn back to the deputy town attorney on that one. obviously since this is gonna be something that next meeting will attend to if you could please find out how that logistically would work out if we need to have an ordinance potentially for us specifically where staff are the ones because as was just noted resolutions and all those kinds of things typically it's the clerk or the council or its town staff for the Planning Commission and if possibly we need to have it adjusted for us specifically, or if we need to alter the way that we are addressing those.
Yeah, I will look into that issue. I also note that the board does have the authority to adopt bylaws with the approval of town council. So I think some of that can be, if the board wants to, the commission wants to consider bylaws, to memorialize election processes, the role of the chair, vice chair, and secretary, and how resolutions are executed. That's something that can be considered as well. So I don't think it would necessarily require a code change. I think the commission does have some authority to establish the process for how you operate.
Okay.
okay um well we have a number of questions on that so if there's anything that you need to find or look into on the back end let us know any other questions regarding this any other comments related to the chair vice chair or potential secretary no okay all right thank you so that leads us to the next item on our agenda 2026-335 the discussion of the annual report to town council commissioner hemp hill since you were the one who uh initially drafted it if you'd like to start the discussion on it um since i know we're going to make some changes on it but some of your thoughts and process when you're going through on that yeah i'll start thank you i had so much time to open it and here we are so this is this planning commission annual report to the town council has looked awfully similar for the last
I don't think I've changed it much since I've been on here and seen it different. So I started from that. The mission and the team, it's just an overview of everyone on the commission because this presentation encompasses what we did for the last six months. I put former commissioners Baham and Burns on there just to acknowledge that they were, the majority of the work was done with them on the commission, but we have our new commissioners as well.
Obviously, I wrote this a few weeks ago, so I have myself as chair to change that.
um and then i the other item i just put staff on here because we're not a commission that works alone um i thought it was nice to just acknowledge that the effort of staff that we had seen in the last six months uh the one name that i missed on this first draft was jaime so i started another draft i can send that to you uh chair sawlish when i get home i'll have it to you by the end of the week please and thank you uh just powerpoint so hopefully you can handle that um So that's the first page. I can just blow through it, and then we can all talk about it, or we can talk about it page by page?
Yeah, that's absolutely fine.
Okay. Going over September 25 to May 26, just a really high level discussion on the hearings that we heard. Just had a list of all the land use cases, the Canyon Creek, Erie PD, Canyon Creek PD, which caused some confusion with the public. So there's notes in the PowerPoint about which of those they are. Spring Hill, Sierra Vista, and Erie Junction just squeaked in there right at the end of May. um and then just a collection of the udc recommendations that we saw that staff brought to us that we recommended i don't go into the details of ultimately how we voted or if we had amendments it's not really that important i don't think but again that's i don't think any council members ever asked about how these votes ever went And then the last one was just bringing up that as part of those new commissioners, we had the rules of procedure review. Just so probably another edit would be the CERSA and staff training that we had earlier this week. I think that would be a good piece to add. So everyone's happy that we got some legal training as well. Hopefully you watched that exciting meeting, Commissioner Booth. And then the last one is goals for 2026. This is always the one that gets talked about the most. This one was, I don't even think I changed this one from our last one, just because I know that it wasn't, don't think worth spending a huge amount of time trying to change this number or trying to change this slide without input from the full commission uh there was one item that i changed on the bottom just you'll see this in the revision that i send you i just changed that last slide to say instead of exploring that bullet it says review the responsibilities of planning commission work with town council and planning staff on work plan so in my communications with staff over the last few weeks or month or so we've been discussing some of the future items and that work plan was something that was planning to be brought up So I didn't capture that in this draft, but I've written those words in the next draft. So that is the end of the, we're not as exciting as some of the other boards when they have fun pictures and activities.
So that's mine.
Over to you, Chair Salish.
Thank you. And thank you for putting the effort on this one. UM SO REAL QUICKLY FOR THE DEPUTY TOWN ATTORNEY AGAIN THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WAS CHANGED NOVEMBER OF 2025 THE SECTION 315 OF THE MUNICIPAL CODE OF REPORTS IT USED TO BE A BI-ANNUAL REPORT TO THE COUNCIL AND NOW IT SAYS AN ANNUAL REPORT IS THIS GOING TO BE THE ONLY TIME UNTIL NEXT YEAR that we will be reporting in this way to the council? Do you by chance know?
It's the only time. The code requires one report a year. It doesn't mean the commission can't get on an agenda
for additional conversations or presentations to the council that would just need to be worked through with staff and the town manager to get on the agenda if there's anything else please again with the staff meetings that i had the expectation is that it would just be one that's what kelly and sarah were expecting it would just be a singular report
yeah that was my understanding based on what i've seen in the conversations up there so thank you and if if i recall during home rule we decided it would be one and if people needed to do more than one it was optional up to town council to request yep and i know uh it's kind of monotony of it when it's literally the same information each spring and fall that these would typically occur so um yeah i totally understand so um So first off, when we look through this, obviously a. When personally, when I look through this mission and team, obviously that's something that is very standard. I don't really see any changes on here besides for, you know, the technical items in terms of the review of what we've done since the last one seems pretty standard again. Now we get into the goals for 2026. we do have a joint study session that is going to be upcoming in july with the current town council There was a tentative agenda for that meeting. However, since some of the things that we have seen or heard from staff, there may be some changes. We know that the very bottom of this list, the Exploring Expanded Responsibilities of the Planning Commission, Work with Town Council on Task for PC to Support Town Goals, um that is something that i know we have had conversations about and has been something that the council was willing to have as a discussion item for the future so um obviously i don't know what conversations uh former chair hump hill had with the mayor about a tentative agenda for that i don't know if there's been anything um personally i would like to see some sort of conversation about the roles and responsibilities we have had conversations in the past about this we as this current or the previous rendition of it with commissioners baham and burns there were conversations before that and then conversations before that One of the things that has changed again, 315 in the municipal code are bylaws. I'm glad the deputy town attorney had brought that up because that was something that I also wanted to bring up. We, correct me if I'm wrong, for staff and for the deputy town attorney, we as a planning commission do not have bylaws, correct?
There were rules of procedure that were adopted by council by resolution, I believe, in 2022. But the commission has not, to my knowledge, has not established bylaws since the enactment of the revised boards and commissions code.
Thank you. And also, this had come up during the Monday night orientation and serious training, the constant, you know, look at your work plan, what your work plan says for staff and for the deputy town attorney. Do you know if we have an official work plan for this commission? i am not aware not since i've joined the town have i seen a work plan okay so when i look at this conversation about expanded responsibilities of the planning commission we have had conversations where we said we have to figure out exactly what it is that we want to do we said we have to have these discussions when i look at two of the ways where we can have the roles and responsibilities added knowing that there is also this conversation coming up with the council in july i think two of the goals that we would most likely want to have on here are to draft bylaws in conjunction with the deputy town attorney and staff because it does have to receive a formal approval so first item obviously bylaws does anybody have any objections questions in terms of the Bylaws themselves and content wise we'll figure that all out Does anybody have any concerns with us drafting bylaws in? 2026 Okay and a work plan. Again, we don't have a work plan. We do have an advanced agenda that goes out about two to three months currently. Does anybody have any objections with us developing a work plan? I'm not saying it's going to be exactly to a T what we're going to do. We're going to figure that out because there has never been bylaws or a work plan for this commission. Does anybody have any concerns, questions related to us creating a work plan?
One comment, please. It part of I know the planning staff has their work. And a lot of stuff. So I think just making sure we work with staff to incorporate their work plan into ours. So that'd be my
biggest comment i don't have an issue with developing i agree um you know when i look at uh council has their work plan that they have every single year um there is a prioritization and there's also you know how many hours is it going to take right it's not where we just toss it on there and we say all right we're going to get done in one meeting some of these things might be multiple portions of meetings that we discuss this specific item whatever might be there is then also the aspect of staff time because we know we're a volunteer body staff is going to do a lot of the legwork in most situations so yes I 100% agree we have to keep cognizant of that and there would have to be that element in there of what does staff have available and what do we have available in terms of our agendas and again what that work plan looks like we'll figure that out but does anybody have any objections to adding those two items bylaws and work plans for this body for goals for 2026 what are some examples of some items that would be in a work plan
like so many updates per meeting or?
So these items on here, the UDC alignment with the comprehensive plan, revisions to UDC regarding affordable housing, I know that one is tentative right now based on the comments we received from staff. We don't know if we won't need those. Other code amendments, as well as anything related to the comprehensive plan, those would be items that would automatically go into that work plan because we already know those are items staff already has planned for us. In terms of what beyond that, that is the question of that roles and responsibilities conversation. Where do we fit in? Does that answer your question? Yes.
And the related question is, first of all, I'm not even sure if we're allowed. Are we allowed to have study sessions? And assuming we are, do you foresee that happening? Because as we start taking on more things, it would take more time.
I see it where we would just have less canceled meetings. We're canceling, on average, one meeting per month. So yes, it would be a study session where we're not having anything voted upon or approved. reviewing these different items and we're working on these different tasks, whatever it might be that we are coming up with.
Yeah, I think it's a good idea.
One more comment. Please. I know staff is working on staffing right now. We have a budget. I don't know if we would want to use some of that budget for a potential consultant to help with that work plan to alleviate some of that workload off staff. But I think that you could bring that up because I don't think we've really ever used much of our, it's on the order of $15,000 budget that were provided by the council. Some of that could be for training. But back to the work plan, if we wanted to alleviate some of that workload on staff and bring more in, I think that is something we could propose.
That's a good idea, and yes, obviously staff time and resources are the biggest element part of this. We can meet every single Wednesday that we have on the calendar, but in terms, as I said again, in terms of the most lift, it's typically on staff, it's not on us. So I do want to recognize and be cognizant of that because we don't want to overwhelm them or add to what they have on their plates already. because that isn't going to be good for us or them i do have a couple other ideas but before i go into those does anybody else have any thoughts on potential goals ideas for this body in terms of how we can ourselves not necessarily roles or responsibilities even things that we can do to better ourselves as the experts in planning and zoning within the community or anything that you see as fitting this body well in a in a good fashion i mean that's pretty loaded question so i'm gonna mirror right away on that and just say you know i i'd like to back up
a little bit to the report itself, because we're on the last page, but the second to last page, which I guess I'm hearing is fairly static, though the names may change. I'm interested, if I may, ask a question of board and staff. Does anyone track statistics on how many cases, the number of units that are approved per year? To me, when you talk about setting goals, the last page here, it would be useful to track What is it that's creating the work of the commission? And I just don't know how much this really is a fixed thing year to year and how much we could add some statistics or characterize the work. So that's for both board and staff.
That is a good question. First off, I believe I know the answer, but for staff, do we have numbers that we can pull for these reports of number units that were approved through that or anything, numbers, quantitative, anything statistically we can reference as part of these instead of just this development?
Yes, we'd likely have information we could share depending on what you wanted to see. Certainly something we could put together or pull. We probably have some of it readily available on some of that stuff, I'm sure.
And again, I don't know how much it informs the direct question you presented that I threw my hand up probably inadvisably, but I do think from the minimum sort of standpoint, like what are the types of applications? How many of special review and how many of the subdivision at preliminary plat, how many went to final plat, just types of applications numerically and then some way to characterize within those categories, number of units,
intensity of use if it's a zoning case you know that type of thing would be useful yeah for numbers not of units i think that's a great addition um you can just count what five they are it's like pds or whatever so that information is here but number units things like that that we recommend and thinking about this doesn't even show what our recommendations are
I can speak to how I built where I got these. So I effectively just go to the agenda center and go to every meeting that we have and then log what it was and kind of track it in that way. so for some of these are preliminary plats some are final plats we had an sru a few weeks ago the police station was a site plan and an sru so they're they're not necessarily the data you're asking for i agree it'd be nice to have that data but i think it's going to be a challenge to get that information in a a feasible way in something that makes sense for a presentation to council. That's my opinion. That's why I didn't go into the detail of each one of them. But it's relatively easy to find.
Can I help you with this presentation? Yes, please. So I think a good idea. I think that's a super good point. And I agree. I think we should attempt to do that in some sort of a chart. And then we can see what the board thinks about it. But I definitely agree that we can narratively say what's on this slide. And I think possibly having a chart to actually show like, oh, this many site plans, this many PDs, this many whatever. It just might be a little more interesting way to present it. So I agree with that.
Yeah, and I will say, former Chair Zuniga, that is something that she did used to do. She would actually break out by the actual application what they were. And I think the first rendition by former Chair Burns also had that on there. i will say one thing that i'm also noticing on here that isn't in here which we probably should address are the number of canceled meetings because it warrants why we are having these conversations about work plan bylaws because we want to help the community we want to help the council so that they can understand we had probably half of our meetings canceled since the last uh report period um so that way we can also address the elephants in the room on that one and another good thing to put in is number of public comments because that shows in the level of interaction with the community yep and we can do that through the uh meeting minutes so that is a good idea please
Again, I don't know that we try to delay this or anything. I mean, I think these comments are really useful moving forward, whether it's for this particular set of goals or not, but I appreciate that. I just want to observe, I was really surprised to hear, though, it's at the source of meeting the other night, the Board of Adjustment has not met since Debbie Stamp became the town clerk, and she's been a town clerk for a while, not forever or anything, but that's usually the sign that your code is working, but it also can be a sign when they never meet that the word isn't getting out. So this data helps us to help, again, the town be more effective at what's intended, which is good planning that involves all people and brings all those values together. So appreciate the discussion. I did have one other comment getting to the last page, which is I don't see the comp plan on here. I mean, I see the mission includes the comp plan, and the comp plan comes up and down the priority list in multi-year cycles. Where are we at on that if someone can just remind me I'm roughly aware but maybe That one I'm gonna turn to staff I I know that there have been a
we we asked about this last year in september when we initially had the roles and responsibilities conversation um and i know mr larue you're filling in for miss driscoll um but in terms of a report on the actual um comp plan itself um there's a number of communities that do this i'm i'm spacing on what the word is that they use specifically for it But has staff contemplated having a report at the end of each year that relates the comp plan to all the development that has occurred in the town that has been approved, how it is congruent with it, or how it deviated away that way it informs any revisions and updates that might need to come?
That's a good question. I'll have to talk with our comp plan team on their reporting. Traditionally, I don't think we have done a whole lot of that. That is a great question. And I do want to follow up on, we are looking at doing some targeted amendments to the comprehensive plan based on direction that we've received. Already started some outreach on that. It looks like we've got a few things on the agenda coming up later in the summer to talk about the comprehensive plan amendments. I'm not sure if we have any type of study session. I don't see one specifically, but we can find out for sure what's planned for that to give you a little more information. I can follow up a little more with our team on, and we might want to talk to you a little bit more about what an annual report or something would look like. We could look at some other areas, sort of decide if that's something you all wanted to see, what we'd want to, how we'd want to format that or how,
Yeah, I that is something that I know when we were rattling off all the ideas back in September last year that is one of the things that some commissions do they do work with staff on that end of your report in relation to the comp plan and the application approvals development that's occurring in town and how it. correlates or deviates away so that it can inform future updates so um you're getting into some of the items for that roles and responsibilities conversation but it might actually be apt now um uh so can you provide dates in terms of uh not right now obviously um but if you could provide dates on when those are going to be coming forward because if there are some things that we're saying um applicability of the comp plan and informed discussion of how it has been applied through the past two years now um if there's anything that we also are identifying as a concern or something to address we might want to get that to council sooner than later because it has to go through the public process the hearing process notice etc so if there are any items we might want to address those sooner than later um commissioner schatz
Yeah, that was a great answer because it went way beyond what I was thinking, so I'm better informed now. Certainly at my first meeting, we talked about Proposition 123 and how that is now translating into some comp plan work instead of more ordinance and UDC-related work. So that had occurred to me. But to hear about, yeah, maybe there's an opportunity to develop some data around it, that's congruent with the conversation coming up. I was more of the impression that, like, let's just put it on here because I think there are functional plans and specific goals that I've already heard of that probably for this report, as you say, Chair, saw it, the council should have a chance to react to sooner than later.
And on the advanced agenda for August 5th, there is comp plan updates listed.
Yes, that's the one I was looking at for later this summer. I think there was another one on there too, but I'll find it.
It may be later. I'm not sure what I'm seeing right now.
Yeah, there's another 819. We have one for comp plan updates. This is pretty preliminary. I mean, these could change. It kind of depends on scheduling and where we're at on these.
And it could change as to the one that we received as of 5-19.
Yeah, we'll keep that updated and let you know. Yeah, I think we'll need to have some conversations with Josh Campbell, our main person who's working on our account plan. We may need to talk to you guys some more on what you want to see, and he probably has some of this data. We definitely have some of the data you've talked about that we report on with building permit numbers and things. We may need to figure out exactly what we're all looking for, but we definitely have data, so we just need to figure out what we want to report, what you want to see,
It sounds like there's other individuals up here besides for myself who like data, so that's a good sign. um and i know this this is an interesting one because we're talking about the presentation to council that we need to turn into staff for public uh publishing and noticing for the july 28th meeting we have to have this in by july 10th although we have in between there our joint study session currently planned so um it's an interesting situation so the joint oh between the council yes yes so um i don't want to get too ahead of this conversation in terms of role and roles and responsibilities um and the reason is because we do have a few meetings before we have that meeting with council we can have these conversations to discuss these different items love the ideas that have come up so far these are the exact things that i would have in mind of roles and responsibilities because there's different ways we can help the council we can help this community not just you know some of those that other communities are doing remember we're a home rule community we should be also attending to items that are specific to us our needs and what our community specifically needs We'll talk more about it, but the statistics of the population, the different capacities of our systems, those kinds of things, those are great things that i personally believe we could help to tackle again i know it's a lot of staff time to even pull that information things like that where we can stay informed basically becoming the long-range planning commission for the town because that is with a comp plan ultimately what we are supposed to be we're supposed to be ensuring all this development is congruent for future development and if we're talking about the future in the comp plan comp plan goes out to to I think 2040, 2045 right now, our full build out. So there's a lot of time that is going to be encompassed in that comp plan. How do we get there? One of the things that I will say that when I look at this and having, before I go into that, any other questions, ideas, anything that comes to mind? Commissioner?
I have a comment. So when we did our application, for Planning Commission. In the application, it stated several different areas that we should be familiar with in our interview, such as the capital budget, expenditures, all of that kind of stuff. And I thought it was interesting, because I don't know that as a Planning Commission, we talk about some of those items that often in here. So I was just going to bring up some of those things that were mentioned in our in our application. You guys might be able to add more to that.
Which is a good prelude to what I was going to say before I said I'm gonna stop. When we had this roles and responsibilities conversation last time, it was a, well, I don't know what that is. I don't know exactly how we can have input in there. And it was a disconnect that I could see. And when I look back at that, the biggest thing that I think may occur in that discussion is, um we we only see certain aspects of the town we see the udc the the actual applications that come before us we see a minimal amount of items there are all the different items that town town council that some of the other boards and commissions they look at and a lot of those do relate back to the work that we're doing here or the potential work that we could be doing First thing that I immediately see is we, unlike some other boards and commissions, Tree Board and Sustainability, they would have joint study sessions together on common topics as necessary. I think that might be something that we could potentially do as well, where we have an annual study session with the other boards and commissions, not just for the relationship between the other boards and commissions, but also there are these things that they are working on that directly impact the comp plan, and I think it's a good idea to stay informed on those, as well as if we are talking about that year-end report on the applicability of the comprehensive plan, That can also be part of it. How did sustainability? How did all these different other bodies? work to affect the The cop plan that we have and to promulgate it throughout the community. So Does anybody have any concerns or objections? Obviously we can talk more about this at a future meeting but having potentially study sessions with the other boards and commissions and
Actually, I have one addition, which is OSTAP also looks at the development plans and has recommendations. So it actually has surprised me that we don't go over those.
yeah and i know that they have a a mild quasi-judicial nature to what they do so we will have to make sure that we stay out of that because if they're reviewing it and then we're reviewing it we don't want to have any conflicts there but i 100 agree um one item that came up last night at the council meeting um was ag open space and the applicability to the home rule charter and that there isn't a single piece of property within the town's portfolio that is part of the reserved open space that is a permanent, dedicated, it is going to be open space in perpetuity. That currently does not exist for any of those properties. I believe by statute, a planning commission can start the process for an amendment, a rezoning amendment, But in that situation, we would have to obviously bring in council because they would be the ones officially applying. So I think these conversations to have with OSTAB and council in the future would be good ones. And yes, I 100% agree. Commissioner Schatz?
Just kind of looking at the clock and the agenda and everything, I want to bring it back to you. Are we taking action on this report tonight, or where do these ideas go in terms of distilling or jumping off the page later?
Yep. Vice Chair Dreckman and myself will make some updates to this. It will come back before us at another future meeting. I think the next meeting was already in the advanced agenda, if necessary, additional drafting or review of the draft presentation to council. Ultimately, we don't need to have this to the council until July or to staff by July 10th.
so we still have a couple of meetings beforehand while we're on the slide one thing I think for goals for 26 I guess it's open goals for 26
Chair Solwich has told me, and they've been very helpful, but for members, if we could review the site plan reviews, or the, I'm sorry, the user guides. Because I think that's a training that would be very helpful for all of us.
Yep, and that is actually the next part of this. So again, I've seen in this roles and responsibilities conversation that there's some things that we just don't know about. They don't come before us. With your permission and staff's permission, what I'd like to do is have a presentation that I will develop of a town hall 101, essentially. basically high level going through everything that's going on at the town again high level 30 000 foot view we're not talking about you know hours and hours into this but then laying into some very specific items and those are some of those items not just so we can understand these things, but also so we can be trained on these. I know the user guides are one of those pieces, the capital improvement fund, the various plans, those kinds of things, those are all they have a very specific purpose. We're not gonna go into every single one of them, but I think that we would benefit to have that conversation so that when we do meet about roles and responsibilities, we can have a better informed, educated conversation about this because we have a general idea why this pertains to us or exactly why it's important to us. Does anybody have any objections on that? Please.
I'm not sure I have an objection. I just think we probably need to lay it out meeting by meeting. Yes. It's ambitious.
It is ambitious. These are things that the planning commissions of the past that I have been part of or interacted with have not done, even pre-dating my town involvement have not done. It is, but we are seeing that a lot of our meetings are canceled. and we volunteer our time we know that we want to help the community so we need to find ways that we can do so um and seeing that there are all the items that council is is dealing with have been dealing with the four times a month meetings that they've been going with um obviously it's you know kind of pulled back um there's there's a lot of things that i think we can assist them with even to just reduce some of that time that they might be spending on it because we've helped to vet these we've worked with staff on these um so and that's what the work plans are all about exactly yes so the work plan is not going to be one meeting and done this is going to take time it will be multiple meetings that we we discuss this um so i'm going to stop and ask for staff since i know that we've had these conversations um there any concerns on your end specifically for the deputy town attorney the bylaws aspect i know that one we're going to be turning to you for actual articulation of those looking at what other communities have done because this is a legal document in a way of what we're going to be looking at
Yeah, no, on the bylaws themselves, I would look for direction first from the council on what we want to include, what the provisions are. I would certainly undertake the drafting and bring that forward for the commission to act on. But I think I'd take the lead from you on what needs to be included in the direction we go with the bylaws. i do want to wait make one note about the conversation about the roles and responsibilities so as the commission's thinking about that so i think as you uh mentioned we are uh erie is a home rule authority or home rule uh municipality um but the commission derives its authority from the charter and ordinances um so if we uh your authority right now derived mainly as a quasi-judicial role to review certain applications in the UDC. As you're thinking about the roles and responsibilities and what you want to do, it may take amendments to the UDC or other provisions of the code. So just factor that in your mind as you think about what you want the commission to be and what things you want it to take. It may take code amendments by town council.
i i 100 agree um any and this has been um you know our previous uh contracted town attorney said the same thing your powers and your roles and authorities are vested by the then board of trustees council um i'm also thinking that the bylaws because that is by code we have to have bylaws and it has to be approved by the council that might be a good place to have some of these items in there generally obviously i do also recognize there could be some ordinance changes because right now it says aspects of title 10 that is what the code says as as it says right now um so that is a discussion that we will need to have i agree Any other questions or comments? Okay, I know there's a lot there. So I will be rewatching this to go through a lot of these. Having been part of these conversations in years past, this is the best conversation that I've seen to date. So thank you all for all of this. Obviously, it's gonna be all of us. I can say these are some ideas that I have. But it's not on me. It is on us as a body to decide what is it that we want to do. This is not going to be all at once. This is going to be some time that it takes to massage this out. But I'm hoping by next time that we present to council, we'll have a much better idea of what are the other things that we have done besides for the applications, the UDC amendments, the things that have added to what they're doing to help them. So thank you. This now leads us to staff reports. Does staff have anything to report?
no we don't have anything major to report just was going to note the next several upcoming planning commission dates just so that you knew or know i know we talked a little bit about them tonight the next meeting we have scheduled is 6 17. the only thing on there currently is discussion of annual report to town council so we'll just look to you to let us know if you want to continue to have that one And then originally I think some of the documentation we sent out showed that we had a land use case for 7-1. Right now it's been removed. We don't have any agenda items from staff for 7-1. But it looks like we have some for the second meeting in July. We have at least one. that it'll probably go that was moved from 7-1. There's another one on there that we may end up bumping, but I think that's all I wanted to share at the moment. If there's any questions, let me know.
So there was a review scheduled for next meeting that got moved to the 7-1 or 7-2. So that's the one from Josh that's going beyond?
Let me just make sure I'm clear. Yeah, we don't have anything scheduled currently for 7-1. Okay. It's empty. The other date, the 6-17, the only thing listed on there is discussion of annual report if you want to have that meeting to talk about that further.
Okay. Yeah, no, there had been one that I guess that's been moved.
Yes, there was one on 7-1 that got bumped. Yeah, that's what it was at.
Yeah, okay.
Thank you.
Since I'm on one of the ends, anything else for Seth?
No, nothing else.
Since I'm on this end, I'm going to start down there for commissioner reports.
No report. Really appreciate the discussion. I do want to note, as we're looking at the calendar, that it's a near certainty right now that I will not be able to be in this room on July 15th, if that's the second July meeting, though the disembodied voice could probably join you. So I just want to give everyone a heads up on that.
So just let you know that what you do for that is you email the town so they can give you an officially excused absence.
Okay.
And not going beyond that, it is something that we will want to probably wrap into the bylaws and probably discuss with council because my understanding is they're having discussions about a meeting policy. I obviously took up the hybrid approach while I was vacationing in Florida. So as of right now, I believe hybrid is available. That might be something that we have to take action on or ask council to continue to allow us to do obviously we have a different situation in terms of just the room as well as the staffing here but if you do have a concern and you wanted to join obviously i have no objections at the moment of doing a hybrid of course i'm going to have to leave it to staff in terms of their ability to do so
I, too, will need to participate remotely. I've already notified staff for the June 17th meeting, so just FYI. I also want to just thank Commissioner Hemphill and Commissioner Broaddus for their service to this commission. I have not been a longstanding member here, but for my time, I do appreciate the work that you've done and especially appreciate the training session that you provided on Robert and Bob's focus orders.
Thank you. I echo the same thank you to both of you guys. You did a great job.
I appreciated the adventure it was being chair. Should be fun for you. And what I got. Get that presentation over to you.
Thank you. I've got two things. First, congratulations to the two of you for taking on those roles. And the second is Erie Pride is on Sunday, 2 to 6. We currently have, I believe it's 44 booths and six food trucks that are going to be there, plus a full session of entertainment. So the more you have there, the merrier. Typically, we get around 3,000 people coming through.
um i would also like to say congrats and a thank you to both of you as well um i continue to learn from everyone up here so i appreciate that and i also appreciate the extra learning opportunities and i'm hoping to learn more as we go along as well and i don't have anything all right so um
Noted by the others. Uh, thank you. Former chair hemp Hill. Thank you. Former vice chair wrote us for all the work and effort that you put into the past year. Um, obviously we wouldn't be sitting where we are in the ability that we have now without the leadership and guidance. So thank you both. Um, and for the others up here, thank you for putting your faith in me as the next chair. Um, I appreciate it. Um, I do have an item. Uh, so real quickly, um, for staff, I know we keep receiving comments about, uh, the Parkdale school, not just us, but council as well. Um, obviously that is a consideration. Um, if it might be possible to have something on the website that relays, we, We understand the concerns. However, BVSD is another government agency that we cannot control or dictate when they actually build. Yes, they have the bond funding. However, there is a lot that they're going through right now in terms of enrollment issues. So I don't know if we might want to talk to communications about that.
Yeah, well, I'll bring that over to our team to talk about, see if there's anything we can do on that front and let you know.
thank you um i do also want to bring to the attention of the commission on last tuesday council had a litany of items related to water there were fee increases there were some other things that occurred probably the biggest one that is going to affect the town is the emergency resolution that was passed on the 25th went into effect on the 26th of an annual allocation of the remaining water credits that we have as a town there are currently 125 acre feet of annual allocation that are going to be provided it's four different areas, contingency use, public projects, economic development, residential development, percentages of this allocation. You might ask, why is this important? Well, this is substantially going to change the growth that we have had. When we look at 65% of residential development able to take on that annual allocation, that is approximately 182 units, that is it. In comparison, I know this has been a down year. We had two years ago, I think it was 900 units. Last year was 400 to 500 units. We have been at a growth of 40% 2015 to 2020, 39.5% 2020 to 2025. So this is substantially going to not only affect our population growth, but also our economic growth. I would suspect that this is an item that we're going to want to also help council to address because this is a. very serious issue and one of the reasons is because windy gap has been delayed nisp has been delayed and we basically only have so much water that has to get us through the next five to seven years approximately unless we're able to find out other solutions so i would definitely highly recommend reviewing the council agenda item from tuesday may 25th where they discuss this because this is going to have serious implications for us so um That is all on my end. I'm not going to change with tradition, so can I have a motion?
Motion to adjourn. Second.
And we are adjourned. Cavill, please. Thank you. Hopefully that was okay.
This transcript was automatically generated from the official public meeting video and is presented unedited. It reflects remarks made on the public record by elected officials, staff, and public commenters. Transcript accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.