City Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Call this meeting of the market city plan commission order. It's Tuesday, November 11th, 2025 at 6 p.m. We'll begin with roll call over Margaret Rainer present. Jacob present. Nicholas Vermont present. Jane Fitken present

and Kevin Clay is present. We are missing Dallas, Steve Lowry, Alex Wilkinson, and Christine Thunder. Um, is there any additions or changes to the agenda or all right? Um, seeing none, we move forward by consent. Um, all right. The minutes of the meeting from 107.5. We need to approve the agenda. That one is do minutes by consent. Minutes by consent. All right. Sorry. I I move that we approve the agenda as presented. I'll second that.

All right. Motion on the floor. All those in favor say I. All post saying sign. Motion passes 5 to zero. All right. Minutes from 10 7:25. Um anybody see any changes? All right. The only thing that I notice is uh there was one inaudible comment that I made um and was thanking um the presenter saying that uh it's something that we need to pay attention to in the future uh when these new buildings that Northern is building come up.

Okay. All right. Since there is a is a change to those minutes, we need a motion to approve those. Motion to approve the second minutes as amended. All right. Motion on the floor. All those in favor say I. I. I. Abstain since I wasn't here.

All right. Um all those opposed say sign. Motion passes three to zero with two abstensions. All right. Um any conflicts of interest tonight? Seeing none, move no public hearings. Are there any citizens wishing to address the commission on agenda items? Our one citizen says no. Um so we can move to old business which we have none. We move to new business. All right. First order of new business is uh letter A 2026 planning commission meeting dates. Of those that are here, anyone see any um changes necessary. Okay. All right. I just wanted to note that I'll be uh absent from the February 17th meeting, but I think that can go on as plan.

All right, I will make a motion. All right, let's get a motion to approve the meetings for 2026. So moved. All right. Uh do we have a second?

Second. All right. Uh Commissioner Vermont with the second. All those in favor say I. I all oppose saying sign. Motion passes five to zero. All right, moving on to site plan review update. This is um a presentation of the site plan reviews that we saw u last year as well as the things that went for administrative review in the last year. Um B or you? So, basically, this was just to give you guys the heads up of where we're at with the 2025 submissions, and then I also gave you the 24 20 uh 2024 submissions. So, you can see the differences of what we're receiving lately. And did you have any questions?

Any questions from the commission, Mr. Fisher? Um, there are a couple that haven't been reviewed yet, but that say admin review in the comments. Um, specifically, I wonder about the Front Street um site. Will that require any planning commission intervention or public hearing or anything? So, it says decision pending. So, they have been reviewed. We're waiting. It says still waiting on plan to meet staff comments. Okay, got it. So, no, it's going to be administrative. Great. Thanks.

Um, I had a question. Uh, what is happening at 2025 US 41 West? That one was an administrative decision. I'm just curious for my own interest, what is happening at that one. So, they haven't done anything with that. That was the saloon pizza. Okay. and they received their approval in January and they did not uh start building forward with that. Okay. I sent them an email and let them know about expiration or if they wanted any extensions and I never heard anything that okay so not so unusual. They do have two years and that's a set point.

They have a year um but they can ask for extensions and I told them to contact me if they have questions about that. So it expires January 31st, 2026. they don't send any requests. Yeah. Just, you know, we've seen a lot of projects not move forward that have been approved in the last few years and it's kind of not that unusual. Um that bank that's being built on the former mall site was approved two different we had two different sets of site plans approved for that one or is this the third iteration?

I believe fourth. So yeah, they of course the first time they were approved was before the pandemic hit. Um but it's just a kind of a symptom of the times I guess that a lot of these projects they get into the get the design phase approved and then they can't move forward from there for one reason or another. And it's it's been kind of unusual I I think you know historically but it's just not that unusual for the last few years for projects like this to stall out. Um anyway, I wanted to just add on to, you know, for the benefit of Jake and Nico in particular that we are doing this review periodically like this because we changed the city adopted new rules as recommended by planning and planning commission um into the LDC a couple of years ago. that reduced what the planning commission has on its plate for site plan review. So the standards now for what planning commission reviews for site plans requires a much larger level of development than it did prior to that point in time. And so as a way to kind of get the planning commission up to speed on when site plans are being reviewed by us and these projects mean are what they are. we're doing these periodic reviews. Um, so like for instance, one of the most visible projects in the community that's going to be coming out of the ground in the spring probably is going to be the the

vault hotel project at the Savings Bank property. Um, and that would have formerly required site site plan review by the planning commission, but no longer does. Um, and well, they did some things that also brought it down to they did a land division to comply with some of the requirements of the formbbased code that apply to that property. uh which they would have done either way had the you know those things remained the same in the plant development code um about what plan commission reviews and what doesn't um but anyway so that's what this is all about trying to be transparent about what we're doing what we're what comes into it because at this point I think when Kevin did the presentation to the city commission we put the stats together for the review in 2024 and we had I think it was 18 site plans reviewed by staff and three reviewed by the planning commission. Does that sound right?

14 staff and five planning commission, right? Okay, that was 24. Okay, so yeah, it's it's pretty skewed towards you know 75% or so that year towards staff review. Um, so we just want to get that out there for public information, put it in our records so it's clear to everybody what's happening. Any questions about that? Commissioner, one one brief question. So, do they just have to start the construction within that one year period? They just have to start implementing it.

Okay. That could be putting a shovel in the ground, which I think was literally what what was the how they met the requirement on one project. That one that nobody likes up on Holly and Lake Shore when they started. Yeah. So, so basically if if the projects meet the zoning requirements then staff is going to approve them I assume. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. And that's a large part of why that was done because you know really all all the development requirements that don't have some discretion um for planning commission to you know use some judgment on it you we're going to approve those uh if they meet all the standards. So um unless there's some kind of really large community impact, you know, it doesn't really make sense to waste the developers time, planning commission's time, staff's time, their big staff reports and all that. that that was a recommendation of the Michigan Planning Association um that you know few years ago that we acted on pretty quickly um because it really especially in kind of these these hard times for for development. Um the financing has become very expensive. the conditions for creating housing just that that's somewhat moderately affordable has become so extremely difficult to achieve. Um, you know, we saw that as something to act upon as quickly as possible because we want to do everything we can to encourage especially housing development um and take out any unnecessary obstacles. Really planning commission thought it made sense. City commission thought it made sense.

Well, also considering site plan review is just an administrative review. You're just bam bam. doesn't meet code. Yeah. We are lucky here at the city that we have the different department with all the staffing that we can really do it internally, right? Unlike a township or something that you only have one staff member and you don't have an engineering department, you don't have a fire department, you don't have a public works department or a police department doing the separate reviews.

And I think we have to feel pretty good about the level of land development code review that we do here. you know, it's kind of a regular thing. Um, so if we know that we like the standards that were adopting, then we should be a lot more comfortable with staff reviewing applications for site. Is that project on third street then not happening? Because that's been out for a long time, too. They're on their last extension. We just got contacted. They hired another different architect and they stated that they will be submitting revised plans to meet s

so they sound like they're still going to go ahead. They they so

maybe almost shall see. Um I think from my experience it has gone very well with the way that we have um streamlined this process and um if staff believes that it's controversial items at all then it can come to the planning commission still just because it's very black and white on what comes to us versus what comes to them. If it's going to be controversial there's still an opportunity for public input. So we have those items. We are bound by our plan development code to pass or not if it meets if the project meets it. But there is an opportunity for the public to voice their opinion. So any other questions? All right. Um moving on to agenda item number five. Citizens wishing to address the commission on non-aggenda items. No. All right. No correspondence, reports, minutes of other boards. Moving on to number seven, training. Uh, maps develops transportation lane use guiding principles article from machine planner bag. Yeah, I meant to pass these out before while I was setting up. But um, pass them down here. doesn't really matter whose names are this one. Um, that article is from this issue and there's a lot of good articles in this issue. So, I think we're probably going to be coming back to that issue with Michigan planner to look at some of the other um articles in there. Um and with the couple of the big projects the city's involved with right now, this is

really um salient time kind of thing to be immersing ourselves in a little more because uh this this article, you know, makes the point that transportation and land use are are intertwined and they are of course in um transportation system decision decisions largely influence with the land use that follows. Um and vice versa. It can land use these decisions can affect the transportation network or new new systems in the network. Um so this is really good that they've adopted some kind of principles. Um, and this committee is going to continue working on this, but um, like I said, where the city's now involved with, uh, we've got a draft micromobility plan, um, that our staff has had a look at and made comments on. So, the the final version of that is probably going to be um, delivered in the next few weeks. uh definitely sometime in December. Um and also we just looked at we just got our first look at the draft traffic uh traffic impact study for the potential redevelopment of I'm going to call it College Heights uh with the old hospital. You got to come up with something.

It was the College Heights Subdivision at one point. So um you could really go back and do St. Luke's or whatever the name of the hospital was before that.

That's where I was born. Um but um yeah, College Heights was the subdivision anyway. Um for so they they study, you know, options for closing down, keeping College Avenue closed. connecting K to Fair, um reopening college, uh and how all those things would affect with the addition of the two new dorms on Prescy and that development, the build out of that site, how those things will affect the projections, traffic modeling, um how that will affect the intersection, in corridors magnetic street college fair and the intersections of those on seven and press sky in addition to um center summit and preso presle um so uh yeah those those things are you know fairly important projects right um so we'll immerse ourselves a little more in this transportation issue here because there's really a lot of valuable stuff in there. Like I said, you know, I started out as a transportation planner and I really um do think that it's it's something that land use planners should really try to understand as much as they can. Um because it they are land use and transportation are completely intertwined. So, thank thank you. I'd be curious to see that um traffic study for college. And full disclosure, I live on college and uh I wonder what's going to happen. I

think that um there should be two streets whether they're college and magnetic or college and K. That's my personal thing. I know that the people on magnetic would absolutely love it if college open. They don't like it the way it is right now. Yeah. But I'm not sure what um level of public involvement if there will be any real public input to those to that study because the study is basically a set of conclusions and recommendations or not not so much recommendations but it's conclusions like if you do this then this. Got it. Yeah. So who's doing the study?

Uh it's a firm called DLZ. They also did the major traffic study around the city in 2013 or 2014 before the roundabout were constructed. With that in mind with the with the hospital relocating needing um better access to the new hospital site and the idea of the roundabouts was part of that project. But um and those studies are super technical and really dry. Um it's not real um it's not interesting reading. Um, but it so I don't know, you know, it's it's obviously a document that's going to be available to the public, but I don't know that it's going to be really released for that is any input by the planning commission or the city commission. I I don't know what I I just don't know what level of I just want to put that out there. I just want to see it when it's when it's ready.

Yeah. Well, it also impacts the college to a certain extent because of the meeting meetings and parking and all that that you can't get from point A to point B because it's dead end.

Well, NMU actually also is contracting with DLZ for some extra. They asked them to do some extra work that they're paying for um specifically related to those intersections uh from fair up to center or maybe is there one between center and right street don't think so. So the four intersections there, Summit, Center, Center, Summit, Waldo, and Prescott or Fair. I I think they paid they're paying them extra for some input on those, especially related to pedestrian um bike safety, but that hasn't been to my knowledge that that the city hasn't gotten any information on that one yet, but yeah. So fantastic. I'll let you know what um I know about the ability to share that study when it's completed.

So it's primarily a study and information. It's not necessarily dictating what the city does. Oh yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Like I said, it's just it's almost like a dichomous tree thing. If you are going to keep K closed, we recommend that fair and K are connected and that either roundabout and or traffic four-way traffic controls are placed at that intersection. that kind of those kind of conclusions. And it's full of this is the expected traffic volume, the expected number of turning movements at each intersection at different times of the day in the buildout years 2030 and 2050. So, you know, and it looks at those intersections in terms of level of service that's expected in those years based on those different options. So, there's a lot of information in there. Um, but, you know, it's pretty easy to glean some of the really important stuff out of it, like we're going to have a failure of, you know, level of service. is going to fail at certain intersections by this time if we don't do some things that are you know recommended or some of these follow some of these conclusions. Um you know the existing conditions will have failures at some of those intersections and you can already see like some of the changes that are happening how that will probably occur. So, is that something uh we could ask for like a presentation or a summary or or something on as a planning commission?

Yeah. Um it seems useful information for us. Yeah. Like I said, it it it may be that DLZ is going to come and do a presentation to the city commission. Um, or I think maybe the city engineers will do a report to the city commission on the study. I don't know how that's going to go down, but I'm sure one way or another we can kind of break it down with maybe have the city engineer come in and talk about it if nothing else. Look at how many more people are going to be in that area with all the building that's going to take place at the old hospital site.

Yeah. You know, what is it? 40 units there. Even if you only have two people in each one, you're looking at larger numbers for sure. That's just the first That's just the first little section, right? Oh, yeah. That's just section on Magnetic Street. I'd expect at least a couple hundred units on College Heights. Yeah. I saw there was an article in the mining journal recently where Mahanei from Veria said like 350 to 400 plus units. Okay. So it's going to go off.

So that's going to really affect the traffic in that area and to have it all run down one street. It's not going to work. And 400 new student beds. Sounds like this traffic study is highly detailed. They're looking at this information, too. So, we just won't be able to come to your house because we won't be able to get there. That's okay.

Um I I appreciated the article and I wanted to put this in there. I liked that it talked about um fostering economic growth and social equity um as an anecdotal piece of evidence. Uh, I was a 10-year long year round bicycle commuter and we, my wife and I only had one car and we figured at the time that it was saving us about $5,000 a year. Average car is driven about 10,000 miles and now the mileage rate is 70 cents a mile at the government rate. So that's like it's even more incentivized to ride a bike. And the more we can plan our city to allow for alternative modes of transportation and our land use that we can make things a little bit smaller, the more affordable our city can be. So this is something that we should be working towards and I appreciated that in the article.

All right. Um, one other comment about that. One thing I like that the article said and I've seen this referenced before and I I really like the concept of thinking about designing city for people versus cars.

You have rely on cars at some point but um yeah we designed cities for cars for a long time. That's kind of reversing that mindset. Put people at the center of cities instead of their cars is a really good concept. Any other comments on our article? All right, seeing none, let's go to our work session. Um, we had a community master plan review article from the MSU extension.

Yeah. So, um I just picked this up because we've used this in the past and so I've got my version of this. Um sure. Um the the reason we're doing this is the redevelopment ready communities program of the MDC is requiring it um to keep us certified or to renew our certification. Um there's a whole series of things that they you know required to start off with to get certified. Um and it was two years ago that the original certification was granted. Um there are lots of communities in the state that have started this or been approved. Um, and so there they went through another round of the same kind of u looking at a lot of the things we did before um requiring updates. We we have um a guide to development that is uh that was required that we didn't have before. Um just as an example that we updated because of this RC review and it was good because there were things that needed to be updated. It was one of those things that's probably on the list of things to do. um but becomes a priority when they say, "Okay, you've got to do this." Um so,

not to get off track on the um screen here, but I'm going to show you guys um just under u the community development department planning page, we've got these four different pages, right? Planning, zoning, engineering, code enforcement. But um so we've this is one place you find the the master plan in the supplemental report and um the uh the guide to development's actually on the zoning page. But so we updated the guide to development. Um the master plan now uh like I said this checklist that I included in the agenda is has been around for quite a while. I think um I used it when I was working on the 2015 community master plan. Um, and by my recollection, that master plan met all of the required items in here. Um, and that's important because the current one doesn't. Um, if if you been through this and looked at it, um, that is a little bit of a problem. But um again, I'm going to point out that on the top of this third page here, it says that the planning enabling act allows communities great latitude to determine the contents of a master plan. And then it goes into how a lot of plans are constructed down here in this next part. Um, and it's, you know, it says you can have basically an introductory booklet or guide book and then a

book that a factbook with all the background information. That's more or less what we have. But then they go on to say third option is to have an executive summary. It's written or heavily illustrated. Um, so our plan actually says it has it's an executive summary that starts out with the uh plan, the guide book or what we call the plan. Um, so excuse, so I've got the whole thing compiled here. And you know, it starts out with this thing. It says it's the vision for vision of Marquette. And it's only like 50 pages. Uh, maybe it's not even 50 pages. And then it gets into the supplemental report, which has 10 chapters plus some appendices. Um that's where all the real data and information about the city is. Uh aside from our the big thing in the introductory section or what they call the executive summary is the land use plan. And that does get into in there's a chart here called the zoning plan which is only three pages. There's not a lot there. Um, but so getting to what why I'm going to call that out is that's the one thing that I see in the checklist that um the zoning plan technically meets the requirements here, but uh we can go from the start of the list, but I want to call out the the

big deficiency that I see on the list by from MSU extension here of what is and they say this so this is in the act I mean they it said shall be included if you look in the column number two do we want to include this element and then they say shall be included so that's in the act that says that shall be included in a master plan for a municipality um the one thing that's not in this plan is the zoning map and there are some other things about the zoning plan that I see is still deficient. I think it's important to keep in mind that the the planning enabling enabling act isn't the kind of law where anybody's going to get sued or in any kind of trouble.

Mhm. But it's the kind of thing we want to try to comply with um to the you know greatest degree possible. But going through the list here, I I did note where I found all these items. Um and we don't need to really talk about those unless you want to. Um, some of those things do require a little bit of uh, not that it's a not that anything's a stretch, but you have to realize that there were some other um, there were some inputs there that don't necessarily jump out at you when you look at the plan. Um, such as, um, how we did public involvement. Um there's there's a lot of questions here about how we interacted with other jurisdictions and other parties. And so one of the things I want to show you all is I mean this is just the basic requirements meeting the basic requirements. We send out memos to our local units of government, our adjacent locals of government, public utilities, railroad companies. So we contact them at the beginning before we start any outreach. This is the first outreach we we typically are going to do for updating our master plan. And um just let them know that this is happening that we welcome your comments and here's where you can find the information. Um so that's basic thing there and I will go over here to um just to go over this. The community master plan has steering

committee comprised mainly of people that reside or work in the city but there's some out outside agencies like the BLP. Um the the BLP is really not a city. Um, a lot of people think it's part of the city, but it's it's not. Um, it's a it's a outside agency. Um, the city only controls whether or not they can sell land that city land. Um the SWP um we had you know county planner Emily uh uh involve the MEBC Christopher Germaine LSCP travel Marquette not uh NMU maps at large resident um didn't really include people from other jurisdictions, but those people all kind of were along uh were kept apprised of things as as things went along. The climate adaptation task force has also kind of kept the prize of the status and uh you know wrote this is a a letter they wrote um after reviewing the final plan. And then that would be the other part of the kind of closing out our public involvement is getting back, you know, in touch with those local units of government and letting them know that here's the we have a draft that we welcome you to review. Um and then all the public, you know, the public events that were done to gather input for the

plan, uh and surveys certainly were taken in some of our adjacent public officials. Um but that is kind of a one thing. If you look at this review and some of the uh recommendations or requirements here are probably looking for more concrete information than that about how you involve public officials from neighboring jurisdictions. The truth is most people in laboring jurisdictions don't have time to get too involved with your master plan update or just honestly everybody's busy and and master plans tend to be one of those things that people look at as wishful thinking sometimes or um something that's you know can take a lot of time to imple implement and um anyway so just that background and uh on that but um going to scroll through those comments here um let's see

so are there things there that we should supplement our master plan with is that what she was saying or

yeah so I was looking for my notes on what is missing So out of this um so on this page where we get into a plan a description of the zoning districts is on that top um row of the I think it's the fourth no eighth page um description of each of the zoning districts that is missing. It wasn't missing from our 2015 plan, but that is missing from this plan. It doesn't talk about the existing zoning districts or any proposed zoning districts. The last master plan, we were thinking a lot about changing um up changing up zoning districts. Um we did a lot of changes. The city adopted a lot of the changes we recommended. Um, but those weren't adopted until the land development code went into effect in 2019. But there was a lot in the 2015 master plan about describing the existing zoning districts and probably some of the deficiencies or uh some of the advantages of adding other zoning districts and maybe eliminating. We eliminated some of the existing ones by the time uh when that plan development code was adopted. Yeah. So, that's one of the things. Um, and

are we missing a map, too? Yes. And that's a current voting map. And that's the current one that we have now. Right. Right. Um, is this something that since we will be amending our master plan that we need to notice people and like go through this whole process again? Um, yeah. When master plan is amended. So yeah. So yeah, it's we go through a lot of the same process. Okay.

Just about everything for public. I mean obviously we're not going to do some big workshops right if it's next if it's this coming year that we do this amendment. Um those things are in the land development code obviously. Um and the zoning plan in here is based on the or our land development code is sort of based on the that zoning plan but um it's you know more or less based on the previous zoning plan from the previous master plan I should say because this master plan hasn't really had a chance it's not been around long enough to affect um what we've done with reszoning or um re reconfiguring any of our zoning districts.

So, you can't add an addendum to the existing. You have to go through the whole process.

Even adding an addendum, adding an appendex requires us to notify people that we're amending master plan. But that's that's not a big deal. Um and that's why maybe you know some of those proforma things like sending a memo to the joining jurisdictions um that's pretty easy and that alone would not be an adequate public outreach for you know doing a major amendment to your master plan or rewrite of but uh I think the things that are missing here where I'm saying this would need to be added. Um those things are pretty uncontroversial unless we're going to make some recommendations to change some of the zoning districts, update them or eliminate them or add new one.

Was there any discussion of that during the whole master plan process? Not really.

Not really. We internally had talked about it quite a bit with consultants. Um, we talked about this, you know, there. So, when we hire a consultant to do this, it's really, yeah, there's there's some give and take between the consultants and the staff, but we let the consultants more or less lead the process with the input from our steering committee and staff. Um, and so what we have in here with this land Just as an example, and this is a big deal for us, is their future land use plan is vastly different than what we have. This is really kind of vague than one we have in here now. And it's more I seem vague on a parcel by parcel basis. It's a it's we used to have a parcel specific future land use plan. um and that may have been too rigid. This is kind of gone towards the creating these 13 typologies which are more like neighborhood or locations districts within the city um where that kind of those recommendations for land use apply. And I kind of argue and we will see how this turns out, but the reasoning that just went before the city commission a couple weeks ago that the planning commission recommended and they denied, I think part of the the different opinions are based on the fact that the land use plan can be interpreted in different ways. I mean, just that what does this what what's the

extent that we're applying this recommendation to? Is it this parcel and the parcels right next to it or is it the neighborhood? And we had a lot of discussion about that during the hearing and so did the city commission. They they more or less had formed their opinions, but um you know a couple of them went to some very uh they went to length on their findings of those things which was really good. Um but they didn't Yeah. They didn't include the zoning districts and at the time no hires. I think our staff assumed that they were going to deliver a master plan that met all the requirements and we weren't looking at these requirements. I think I would I was a bit concerned about, you know, not having the zoning um described in there. Um I and I I don't remember why a zoning map wasn't included. Um but should have been those things should have been included and we dropped the ball on that. our our uh consultants very good consulting company and they won national award the year before this they came to Marquette with this plan that's not the first time they worked they did they were the consulting firm that coordinated our 2004 plan as well um but um yeah those are oversightes and again I don't consider

them to be a huge deal because the land development code does has very good and describes all of that stuff, but we will need them in the plan to get those things. I think are there other things as well sort of big ticket items that you noticed going through this?

No, as uh that was those were the only things I thought were missing. Um uh there are some things that like here I don't think were necessarily applicable and um you know without really getting into each one of these things I I don't think there was anything that was really missing that I can remember um this this one thing on redevelopment sites. So these are I these are optional items here though I think do you want to include this in the plan? Um this item this is the bottom of page 12 says plans might also include if reasonably can be considered as pertinent to the future development of planning jurisdiction recommendations as to general character extent layout of development or rehabilitation blighted areas the removal relocation widening arrowing and then change use streets grounds open spaces buildings utilities other facilities Um we did do this exercise which is covered in page 29 to 33 of the executive summary for um what the community thought were it priority sites for either redevelopment or larger scale like transformation visionary kind of transformation that's not quite the same as this and I think this get this one gets to something that I think should be in the master plan which is um asset management. Um really talking about how the city is going to manage all this

assets um at and that is going to require the city to actually start doing asset management on a organization scale. Um which is a big deal. was something that's uh the Michigan Infrastructure Council is trying to get cities around the state to buy into. Um all cities in Canada or at least in in Ontario now require asset management to be done on an organizationwide for the mun municipality. Um, and what I'm talking about there is not just, you know, the equipment the city owns in the buildings, but it's IT infrastructure, it's roads, it's underground utilities, it's water treatment facilities, it's everything. Everything. It's staff. Does it include things like uh wetlands in the city or

only if that was only if that was municipal property? I mean it but property is another thing and how how the city is going to um the city would need to really prioritize come up with its existing standards or conditions and then prioritize for all of those assets what the target goals are for uh service delivery um and how the life of those facilities so it can you know have a better weight than a better framework for investing our tax dollars. And it's other revenue over the years because most cities right now are just kind of in kind of reactive mode to how how do we pay for emergencies or how do we pay for things? You know, we bond for things with tax for things. But, you know, have um there's not really that kind of real super detailed laid out kind of plan for all of your assets and how you're going to phase things out or replace things over time um on that kind of organizationwide scale. So anyway, that that is another thing that I think we're some of us at the city have been trained in that and we're starting to advocate for the city to do asset management um on that level and that would be something that would be I think would cover a lot of this stuff. work sort of would be nice to to talk about in here with how we manage all of these public buildings and facilities streets and I we do cover our streets quite a bit but we don't and we have a community facility section but doesn't get into

any of that kind of uh analysis of these things being our assets and what they mean to us and how we pay for them take care of them Um, two questions for you. Can we see and have this uh handwritten chart that you've written on emailed to us? I did. I included it in the email last week. Okay. I did not see that one. I didn't see the handwritten comments. No. Okay. Um, I thought I put it in there and said, you know, these are my notes on this. Shake your hands. Okay. I think there are three attachments to the email. I'm seeing I included the full list and then my breakdown list here.

Okay. Uh and then in the agenda is the truncated list. That's what I had read as the agenda.

This is where it's truncated here where it gets to this last page where it starts say best plan practice content. And then this goes on for like 10 more pages about things they're recommending. um which that's not really where there's enough in the stuff that we have to do for reviewing the plan as it is. But um if we were in that phase of the cycle where we're a year from having a new master plans project started, maybe we want to get into that fast.

That bring goes to my next question. What is your timeline in hoping to get this reapproved? And if we're noticing people again um with the word out, how long is this are we looking to work on this particular? Um, yeah, I if it was just an amendment for those things we discussed, um, I think that's pretty simple and could be a process that only takes a few months, three, four months, but I'm not sure that's what we're going to do or if we're going to get into something more substantial before we do an amendment. That's something we've got to talk about some more. Um, after this meeting, we'll transmit the minutes to the RR RC staff and redevelopmentary communities. Um, and get their feedback. Um, and then we probably have some more discussions about I just was telling Andrea the other day, you know, we've got a pretty robust list now of things we need to update in the land development code. And something we were talking about last year that we didn't do at all was approaching some city initiated resoning. um because I do think there's some reasonzoning that is justified um basically changing some things we changed previously uh in 2019 when we adopted the community master the plan development code there was again a lot of reasonzoning with that code a lot of the parcels were changed that we we got rid of districts we got rid of the office district. We

created mixed use as its own district besides existing mixed use districts in the third street corridor in downtown and waterfront districts. Um but um there so there are some other properties and I think I want to you know have some discussion with Dennis about whether or not we might embark on that. Um, and that's something I could come up in the work session that I emailed you guys right before the meeting, but I just got this this afternoon from the manager's office that they're scheduling a joint planning commission, city commission work session on December 8th, if there's enough planning commissioners that are available, 5:00 pm on Monday, December 8th. that might be a topic to bring up at that meeting. Um and um I guess at our next meeting maybe we could talk about that a little more.

Yeah, I'd like to revisit this for sure and develop our talking points for that meeting in December 8th. Our next meeting December second. Yeah, we're going to meet planning finishing in the second. We can that'll definitely be something for the work session. Will that be over at on the right street location again? Most likely. Yeah. Right before their city commission meeting. Yeah. I have a city commission meeting. That's what the email said. I thought she before our cityular meeting prior meeting the week before or commission meeting. Yeah,

my guess is it's going to be here because they're asking to meet prior to the city commission meeting. Okay, gotcha. We did that one year. Put some tables across. Kevin, yes. In previous master plans that I've been involved with, we had the departments literally come up with a list of we have X, Y, and Z graders and this is their shelf life, you know, um that when they need to be replaced and we also had that for the roads and when we thought the roads would have to be replaced and sidewalks. Have you guys ever done that? No, that's what the asset management um framework was all about. But engineering does it

engine? So yeah, engineering public works have their own I mean but it's not something that's done as a whole. Okay, gotcha. We every department has not done that kind of thing. I mean for its own assets and I think a lot of us still don't even understand what our assets are. That was really helpful when you were looking at the big picture. Sure. and that you got x number of dollars you're going to have to outlay for these these two roads that are you know

I will say currently there it is in the works and the manager's office has been working um with city staff on a program that is an asset management program and trying to get it built so far um certain departments have been built and they're going to keep moving it on so I mean the city is moving towards that moving towards it they're just not yet embarking on the way the Michigan Infrastructure Council recommends do which is uh really involved. It's very involved. But we also had a list of city-owned properties too. And we do have the municipal inventory with you know the zoning and Yeah. But those are all like the basic inputs to this huge framework,

right? It took months. Yeah. Well, they So, that's something that they're estimating would take the city three to five years to get before we're up and running. Oh, yeah. Of three to five years of work to get there. I'm thinking it was a couple years of just gathering data.

Yeah. Right. All right. So, I don't really have anything else on the the master plan checklist. Um, I think we pretty much revealed where we're at with that. And if you guys are satisfied having more questions about my comments, anyone have any questions or all right. Well, we'll look forward to moving forward on this in the years to come. Um, next part of our work session is the review annual review of land development code amendments.

You guys are basket upset now. Yeah. Maybe I think this one is in your realm. She compiled a list. Yeah. Hang on. Both of you. So we're starting with the this is this is really easy kind of stuff simple fixes of clerical I noticed that there was always one let's see that you have to discuss that we have to discuss. Yeah.

All righty. So these were basically things that we have found that needed to be fixed. Um basically lang language issues but it's not something that we can fix ourselves. action has to be pretty you guys are amendment. So for instance this first one we need to fix the language as shown um moving the word is and then instead of vertical plan it should be plain. Did you guys have any issues with that? No. See this one this is going to be easy tonight.

Keep going. The next one uh instead of there shall be not it should be no any uh in the next one we have found that um the list for defined terms for the market downtown waterfront did not have the indoor recreation uh so that needs to be added any issues with that no just a not an issue But a question, are gyms included in the indoor recreation definition?

No, they they fall under a different thing. They're like service uses. Okay.

Okay. Then um actually in reviewing the 101 South Front Street plan, uh Dave and I looked at the language for the full RBL and want felt it needed to really state and clarify this means the total of the two street frontages or you can say all street frontages. Um maybe maybe we should put that maybe if it's a lot that has three fronts. Yeah, there are some like up front building has three branches.

It's not in here, but RBL is required building one. Thank you. All right. So, yeah, if it's language to all. All right. This other one um while it was in the one and two stating MDR, it wasn't in the title. So that needs to be fixed. Okay. Any issues with that?

Um so while uh we're actually starting to see short-term rentals again, some people sold the homes and things like that. And we realized that with the changes of the code of allowing for triplex and quad flexes in LDR and MDR and also changing the code language that those no longer are multiple family residential and multiple families only five units and more. This actually needed to be added in here for proximity recreations. So it's basically a fix for us changing the code. So these have these now have regulations when it's in that zoning district. Okay.

Do you guys have any issues with that? No.

Because this is how it was applied before, but now since we changed the code, then it's just been like now in no man's land. So we're trying this out. Uh the next one is we reference an incorrect um item and this is just updating it to reference the correct item. Any issues with that? This one we had fixed the one above, but we didn't fix the one in the middle of the paragraph. Any issues with that?

Oh, I see. Yeah, I didn't see the one above when I was reading through it. No issue. All right. Now, here's the question. Did you guys have a chance to read through Dave's staff interpretation on this? Did you have any questions for Dave with that? Any questions?

I I did have a question. Um, so if this temporary tent situation is approved as is, what are there any something what I immediately go to is blacks? If they could apply for a service permit outdoors, they could put easy ups in their parking lot every Friday night when they're very busy in order to have outdoor sales. Um, is that something that we want to um have in the code? Is that or is that uh not allowed in the way that this is written? Well, let's see. So, you're talking about blacks.

Well, this one is an example because if we change the LDC, it's going to apply to every business that's in the third street corridor. And while this is referencing something that's currently at Sstone, um I'm wondering if other businesses would take involvement there, take advantage of this change in the LC if we changed it to not hold tight to how much room you're taking up.

Correct. Uh yeah, because it's that allows the total not more of 90 days in any 12-month period. And currently, we go off the existing or required parking. And the decision is whether or not we should be looking at the existing spaces uh with the staff interpretation and whether we should change the way the code reads. And your question is whether we should do that because then that would allow for they could potentially take up their entire parking lot. Correct. And what issues and planning comm

that is kind of concerning when you think about it. I didn't think of that example. Now this is not just for the third street. This would be for any commercial parking lot. Any commercial, right? But the size issue that you could fill the parking lot, right? on a week on a weekend for like they're they're using a weekend as an example, but it could be for up to was it 90 days just a long time to not have gone to have parking since parking is a premium in a lot of places

and it's only in it is in not just 33 corridor but it is in every place that is exempt from having parking regulations which tend to be more we need it as as much as possible. So if we're exempting them and letting them cover it. Do you have any comments interpretation? Well, just to be clear, my interpretation's only where there's no parking required, which is the third street corridor example. So

it's true, but there is existing parking. This is just really um this interpretation is just about the fact that how that's construed. There's no parking required. Um then they wouldn't have to be concerned about that part of the code. So if they were building something new, they're not required to build that parking lot, right? As long as wherever new is not a special land use.

Yeah. Unless they might, you know, there's a few different uses up there, assembly uses, for example, funeral home, they have to have some parking, but most of the uses up there don't require having any onsite parking requirements such as black rocks. They don't they're not required. So, if they put a tent on their parking lot, they're not really reducing good. And that was the language in the code. It says responding to that part of the code. It says 25% of the existing or required. Existing or required. Right.

So what are you suggesting that we change it to just required? If it's not required, then how can we make them suppose that's accurate? Yeah, I really think that should only apply to those situations where parking is required. Myself, it's my

because existing parking spaces is a different thing too. A lot of these lots have quite a few parking spaces along Third Street. A few that have quite a few, but they're not required necessarily. And if is it fair for them to say if they're not required then they just because they are existing they have to set aside they can only set aside so many of those that doesn't seem fair. But on the other hand are we allowing them to put up a tent for 90 days for like all summer?

Yes. Yeah. Are there other examples of where this has been applied like this? Where you mean where the code has been applied or in the inter? Yeah. Or for the outdoor temporary retail sales like where? Sure. We have them all over. So in general commercial and central business district and third street corridor Christmas tree sales season plant sales but those are are fairly short in duration they general

the summer plant sales are the ones that kind of go on for sometimes that goes from one season to another spring into fall and we don't 120 days. I don't think we've ever gotten complaints about that because most of those places parking lots were over taking up valable parking in general. But some of these places it could be problem. But the thing is they're hurting themselves and that's that's where with parking we're starting to get into or most cities are starting to look at it. The developer doesn't want to build parking. Who are they hurting? They're hurting their client. They're hurting their own

neighbors. Yeah, it could be the neighbors too, which we ran into. I won't name it, but a lot of complaints. Well, that that third street corridor is is challenging because there are no parking requirements for most of the uses. So, it does sometimes the neighbors are the ones that get impacted by parking on side streets or whatever, but that's kind of a a decision that other people have really advocated for and want.

Yeah. this uh particular um uh example, are any of those parking spaces um residential parking spaces? Because I think that so those residential are required. Those are required. Yeah. So if they do have a residential use on the lot, then we have those required. Okay. Both in the thirsty corridor and the central business. Okay. So, it would seem to me to make sense to to change the terms to just required.

Yeah, I guess I really have no idea. I just wanted to ask some questions about it. As long as they're required is in there.

Yeah, as long as required. One of the things, you know, in this um interpretation is um to talk about is the fact that I did note that existing parking spaces are private, but if the business owner wants to allow temporary sales in especially outside of daytime hours, we should not sadly away. Um there's no compelling reason. So the daytime hours thing could be a consideration too. Um but that's parsing and maybe finally I see no issue with omitting the daytime hours portion like the logic on what we're we're saying is if there's none required then you can't have Yeah. prohibitions on them doing that for and putting it into uh time of day is a little bit too fine. I think

it's already going to be there. So I think yeah okay so we will take out the language existing for correct right that was it all right you need a motion yes let's see a motion motion no you don't yeah to adopt these changes to our land development code as no no we're not this is just a work session so it just be a motion for staff to add this to our final document. Correct. That's all right. I say that with your proposed changes.

With your proposed changes. All right. Commissioner Cer with the second. All in favor say I. All same time. All right. Passes 5 to zero. Commission staff comments. Commission. I have no comment. I'd like to thank the two new members for joining us. Look forward to seeing you. Um I'd just like to reiterate that I'm I'm happy to be here and look forward to being a productive member of the this commission.

Excited to uh learn from you all and serve the city. Uh welcome to our new members. All right. Uh Dave, maybe at the next meeting we'll have more of a full board. Maybe um be good for you guys to give us a little background yourselves at that meeting just for um yeah. So it looks like we're going to cancel the meeting for next week because we don't have any business for it.

Okay. Um, and then we talked about having a work session on December 2nd. Uh, and please follow up on whether or not you're going to be available for the December 8th work session, city commission. It looks like we'll also be having the December 16th meeting. Normally that one is one that gets cancelled but some I've been told that I'm probably receiving something this week. Okay. And then just welcome.

All right. And uh thank you both for stepping up to the plate. Looking forward to working with you. Glad you're here. Uh and this adjourns our meeting at 7:19.