Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. I did, I did. I know, I know. Thank you very much. I just turned that on. Great.

I think everybody's here. We're going to be a few seconds before 7 o'clock, but I'm going to go ahead and start the meeting. This is the Planning Commission for the City of Martinsville. Tuesday, August the 25th, 2026. Meeting is called to order. First up is roll call.

Richard Bastin. Here. Steve Bodie. Here. Jim Burkett. Here. Joe Disney.

Present.

Richard Durnall. Present.

Caleb Forrester. Here. Rick Heacock. Here. Ann Miller.

Present. Jason Scott.

Here.

Troy Swan. Here. And myself, Marilyn Seidrichs.

Okay, we got a full house tonight. Everybody's here. Next up is presentation of minutes dated July the 28th, 2026. Has everybody had a chance to look at the minutes?

Yes. Ann Miller makes a motion that we accept the minutes as presented.

Do I have a second? I'll second that. Caleb Forrester seconds the motion. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? I will abstain. I was not here, Jim. Okay. Steve said. Steve Bodie abstains. Jim Burkhart abstains. Neither one was here. Okay. All of that as well. Troy Swan was not here.

I was here. Richard Bastin was not here. Wait a minute. I'm missing.

I've got Ann. Ann made the motion. Motion. Caleb seconded it.

Steve Bodie abstained. Okay. Jim Burkhardt abstained. Okay. Richard Bastin abstained. And choice one. And choice one. Okay. Next up on the agenda, there is no old business, so we'll go directly to new business. Docket number PC26021 is a planned unit development called Maple Hills on address of State Road 252. It's actually off of State Road 44.

Mr. Chairman, we're going to need to table this request this evening. Last evening, the council, Martinsville Common Council, did not take action on the rezone. They needed additional time to discuss the lot width in relation to the building setbacks for homes. because of the way that the ordinance has been presented. And the ordinance, if you'll recall, they had specific language that talked about lot width. And so we're not going to be able to move forward with a plat until the City Council takes action on the ordinance. That's been tabled until the September 14th meeting of the City Council. so we will go ahead and place this on the agenda for the september plan commission for the preliminary plot consideration by the plan commission sure No. The way, if you'll recall, the way that the ordinance was presented to the Planning Commission for rezoning, Four Star makes a very specific ordinance whereby they ask the Planning Commission to make a recommendation to City Council of everything that includes lot width, all these things that traditionally aren't included in a rezoning ordinance. Right? So because of this particular ordinance and the way it's presented, The Planning Commission cannot consider a plunder and flat until that order has been accepted by the City Council.

So we'll put this back on the docket for the September 29th, 2026 meeting. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. With that, that's all we have on new business. Do we have anything that we'd like to discuss this evening? The one thing that I would like to bring up, we all got an email from Ms. Moser on the September 22nd meeting that we're going to have on the joint meeting. with the city council zoning and also planning commission. And at this time, there's some important things that I think we need to be there. And I asked Sandy if she would come up and talk about that. Sandy.

Good evening. I'm Sandy measure. I'm not sure if I've met everyone face to face. Nice to meet everyone. I heard that you had meeting a couple years ago with KK when I came in it was mentioned that it wasn't very well attended so hopefully this one will be attended very well she is retiring at in November so this is our last opportunity to be able to get her to speak with us she is a wealth of knowledge. She has written the book for planning and zoning. And she will bring a lot of knowledge and will be able to answer a lot of questions and steer us to more, I guess, recognition of what our jobs are and our responsibilities as in the planning commission versus the common council and the board of zoning appeals. I have not been, since I've been here, there has not been a BCA meeting. So I'm very interested also to see that process also. But I'm hopeful that everyone will attend and we will be able to get a lot of and knowledge from her.

Thank you. Yes, and what I got from the previous meeting was that the zoning and the plan commission, even we have different things to look at, but we also should be working together knowing what one hand is doing versus the other.

Correct.

So I think, and you also brought up, you said in July that there was new stuff for the state of Indiana.

The state is coming down with some new fair housing regulations that We will be addressing within the next few months by the end of the year. Dell will be working on that and it will be presented before the Planning Commission by the end of the year.

Okay, but that is all stuff that KK would bring up.

It might be. There's a lot of stuff that Dell will be bringing also before the board. Some ordinances and stuff that will need to be passed before the end of the year. She'll be able to address that also. Hopefully by the end of the meeting that we will be very well first and our responsibilities and we can um go from there and yes thank you very much thank you would you remind us the date and time it is june 22nd at 5 30 september and that's a tuesday night isn't it it's a tuesday night at 5 30. approximately how long will it last She said about two hours, two, two and a half hours, just depending on how many questions.

I know the last one we went to, and that's when I really took notice of Mr. Bodie because he had a lot of good questions for KK that she answered immediately. So that was something. So the ones that didn't come... to the last meeting we had with her uh she is very knowledgeable she's going to go she's got a pamphlet she'll hand out and she'll go right down through that and boy she'll answer a lot of questions that you you may be setting here as planning commission members going well I wonder about this or I wonder about that. She actually has an answer and from that meeting two years ago, I still, I don't have it tonight, but I usually carry that with me because I go back and look at stuff that she presented on stuff that we need to be in compliance on.

I took one of her classes 20 years ago and I still had the handout from 20 years ago when i did her first class then and she's been doing this for probably about 40 years so well it'll be sad to see her go but i'm glad that you got her back for us to go back through her one more time okay thank you do we have any other just for clarification i guess that's our typical fourth that's the fourth tuesday of the month which we typically meet

Are we where that's the week before?

I mean our meeting is on the 29th. The first is on Tuesday, so we meet the fourth Tuesday of every month according to their schedules. Are we not meeting on the 22nd? There's five Tuesdays.

I don't know. Sandy, do you have the official calendar there with you as far as when we send out notice?

That's right, it is the 27th.

Our meeting should be the 27th.

the Planning Commission meeting.

So we must have scheduled an alternate night.

I did a different night than the Planning Commission meeting. So everyone could be here because the council is also being included.

We need to confirm that.

I'll confirm that with the notice that was sent out originally the first of the year and I'll let you guys know. Okay. All right. Thank you, Dale.

What date did we have?

Dale's going to confirm this and we'll get back with this.

Okay. Good. Good.

Any other discussion? Something that I would like to bring up is Mr. Gurnall, last meeting you made a comment at the end of the meeting, other business written and all of a sudden executive meeting should be held in order to discuss the comprehensive plan. Did you want to address that tonight?

I think we can probably handle that at the training session. Okay. Just in a nutshell, I've noticed a couple of petitions this year that don't quite line up with the future land use maps for our comprehensive plan. I think it's been four years since it was updated, so I don't know if there's a set time schedule for renewing that, but I just thought it was something that we might look at. If our direction in certain areas has changed, we'd probably want to update that plan, or at least know when our next thorough look at that will be.

Mr. Coffey, has there been any conversation on that that you've heard?

No, that I'm aware of. Typically we look at those every five years.

Okay. Okay. So we'll, we'll talk about that then while city council zoning and that's all in that meeting. That'll be something to bring up.

That works perfectly.

That would be a good opportunity for everybody to get on the same page on that.

And I think case in point is when the one gentleman wanted to zone his property over on Road Street, Upper Road Street, he wanted to zone it industrial, right, from?

I believe that's one I have a question about.

Right, right, right.

yes good point is there any other comments conversation we'd like to have so that that was something that I

Yes, and I have a copy I can hand to you if you weren't here last month. It was brought up that other communities use, and I don't know what the percentage is, I'd say it's roughly half, use some sort of anti-monotony standard to make sure that developers are not building the same front elevation with the same designs and the same color.

Is that a suggestion for us to consider for upcoming developments?

It probably should be. And in the case of what we discussed last month, I had two different examples. And the petitioner actually referenced, she said, no problem with including that in the ordinance. And she referenced that the one that she was most used to seeing had a diagram. And when I held that one up, she's like, that's exactly what we're used to seeing. So yeah, that wasn't an issue to include.

So do we have anything else? Everybody's here. Steve, did you have a good trip? Yes. You've been out hunting dinosaur bones.

Yes.

We had success. Good. Good. Glad to hear that. All right. Well, if we don't have anything to discuss any further, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Caleb Forrester makes a motion to adjourn.

I'll second it.

We're ignoring all seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Meeting adjourned. Next meeting is scheduled here on our sheet Tuesday, September 29th. Mr. Coffey is going to verify that and will get with us. Thank you all for coming.

Thank you.