Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

The meeting of the McLean County Regional Planning Commission will come to order at 4.01 p.m.

This conference will now be recorded.

Recorded by staff member Katie McShane. The quorum is present. I know that Commissioner Burrow is online. As we do have actual items on the agenda, Commissioner Burrow, do you wish to participate virtually via reasons stated in the Open Meetings Act?

If I may, I've been missing the last two meetings, so I'd like to join today, yes.

Okay. And so for the record, can you state why you're absent today?

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm unavailable because I'm not feeling well.

Okay. Appreciate that, Commissioner Murrow. Is there a motion to permit Commissioner Murrow to participate virtually? Second. Second. All in favor aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. So I see no one signed up for public. No one from the public wishes to address the commission today. So we'll move on to the consent agenda. Would any of the commissioners like to remove any items from the consent agenda? If no, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Second. All in favor, aye. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. So we do have one item, 5B, on the regular agenda, which is our authorization to execute a professional service agreement for community engagement consulting services for the McLean County Regional Comprehensive Plan. So the memo and the draft agreement were included for the commissioners in your agenda packet. Ray, do you want to explain a little bit about the scope and qualifications of the consultant for the scope?

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Thank you so much. This is a professional service agreement for the Regional Comprehensive Plan 2045 project, which is ongoing, as you're aware. We have planned for three rounds of public engagement throughout the process. And we have considered the necessity with some professional service to be provided, working with staff in terms of the public engagement, activities, reports, just the involvement of the public with the process. So what we are proposing here, subject to your approval, is to engage Ms. Vidal, who is the Director of Mission and Equity Consulting with YWCA, who is sitting in the back here. And she has helped us out through the strategic planning process in terms of public engagement last year. on her pro bono kind of service and so she understands the function of our organization and the planning process and also because the strategic management plan actually is kind of off-shoot of the regional campaign plan and so we are proposing that this contract, which would not exceed $5,000, and that be approved, recommend to be approved by you. And then with her help, then through the different rounds of the public engagement, activities involved in all the planning or summary reports, and through the end of the planning process, 4 of 2027. I'd be happy to answer any questions. The proposed PSA, Professional Service Agreement, is being revealed by legal under no concern. Great. Who's paying for it? It's going to be paid out of our budget, which primarily IDOT. Yeah, because we don't come as far as one of the functions, although it doesn't say transportation, but it is part of funding primarily for IDOT. I'm in favor of this, obviously. My only question is, given the dollar amount, can't you just put that? Yes, and it's because of dollar amount. Did you mean like if... Well, can't you approve something? Oh, I see. You know, $20,000 or $30,000? Right now we don't have that permission in the bylaws. I know some cities or towns, they do the city managers up to like 20,000 or whatever. Yeah, you know, I wish that we don't have that. Yeah, it's a good point. So we have to go through the process. And for the counties, procedure-wise, anything that's not more than $5,000, actually, we don't have to do an RFP or comparison. Sure. I'll make the motion to approve it.

OK. Second? Second. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. So moving on to agenda item number six, where we will cover the items for information and discussion. We'll have Luke up first with the regional housing initiatives update. Luke, you have the floor.

Good afternoon, everyone. So here are my updates for regional housing initiatives for the month of August. local updates. So we chaired the July 2026 housing staff meeting last week. During that meeting, we presented the findings of the housing and transportation in Bloomington white paper. So I explained it last month, but I'll give a recap again. So this white paper examines the location of a new residential, and because of feedback, we added new information. from residential remodel permits issued by Bloomington Normal from 2023 through 2025 and their proximity to transportation infrastructure such as bus stops and sidewalks. So this white paper also tackles a walkability heat map showing locations of high and low walkability in Bloomington Normal. So based on feedback, we added residential remodel permits, and we added in 6,666 residential remodel permits. Some of the findings include most of the new residential permits are located on the outskirts of Bloomington Normal with limited public transit access. On the other hand, in terms of residential remodel permits, it's more widely distributed throughout Bloomington Normal. And so these locations have greater access to bus stops, sidewalks, and destinations. In terms of proximity to bus stops, 77.5% residential permits analyzed are more than 10 minute walk from the nearest bus stop. In terms of residential remodel permits, 48.2% of them are within a quarter mile from a bus stop. For sidewalks, 91.1% of new residential permits are within a quarter mile of a sidewalk. And then for residential remodel permits, 97.7 of them were within a quarter mile of a sidewalk. So for walkability, the highest walkability locations are downtown Bloomington and Uptown Normal and shopping centers around Veterans due to the number of amenities and access to public transportation. For the new residential permits, only four or 1% of the new residential permits are within the top tiers of walkability. However, on the other hand, residential remodel permits, 7.9% or 530 residential remodel permits are within the highly walkable zones. So these are concentrated mostly around downtown Bloomington and uptown Normal. For other updates, NCRBC attended the July Housing Coalition meeting, and we also attended the Central Illinois Continuum of Care Conference at the St. John Lutheran Church. The conference had the building last week. So both of these events discuss strategies to address and end homelessness, both regionally and locally. Those are my updates for regional housing initiatives. Do you have any questions?

The permits just allow the ability to do the work? Yes. So who pays for it? The residential owner?

Like the permits itself? Yeah. So they have to apply so that the city and the town will issue a permit. And so I just want to clarify, so this white paper, we just looked at permits specifically. We don't know whether it's actually built. And this is not supposed to be an inventory of all the housing units. So this white paper just looks at where the new developments are and the residential ones.

And also, if I may, just also a good way for us to have a good understanding of where people are investing to the existing homes. And so that allows us to get a glimpse of, hey, maybe the east side, maybe the west side, people willing to invest, reinvest, actually, the existing buildings and residential dwellings. So that's providing, hopefully, some stability for certain neighborhoods.

I think it could also, it sounds like it could also be used to show where we're not investing and where infill or growth could be a priority. Yes, thank you. I was a little tired. Particularly from the perspective of preserving farmland, right? That's important, such an important economic driver and natural resource for McLean County, so I'm wondering if we could flip it and do some, if the media could do some focus on that. Might be a nice and interesting take to bring more attention to that.

Yeah, it might be good to also look at the trend, because it's just, what year, what period? 23 to 25. Yeah, so that's, and before that, I guess it's covered. It's kind of COVID. Part of that is kind of COVID. Actually, during COVID, as you may know, a lot of people spend time to work on the house, work on it and whatnot. So yeah, this might be a thought. It's looking good. But I think there's some maps that the staff have done of sewing where those spots are. So that might be a story. The reverse would be really interesting.

And then that white paper will post it on our website. It's actually done so it's ready to be published. Do we have any other questions?

Thank you. Thank you. And right up next with the housing coordinator position update.

And I know the closing date, as communicated last meeting, was July 27. So are there any RFPs submitted?

I wish I could say yes, but we did not. So we have reissued the, we have revised the RFP a little bit, and then we have reissued that, and then the new deadline is August 24th. And so if you know of any qualified individuals who might be interested, it pays pretty good, I think, although it's a grant-funded position without benefits, but I think it still pays pretty good for you. on the housing scene and please encourage them to apply. Again, the deadline will be August 24th.

Do you feel that the unconventional idea of it being an RFP is kind of making it harder to get applicants?

We have actually, we thought about that too because we have the same concern. So we have

Also like on the Kami website, it's under jobs also that will refer people to the RFP.

And also we are working on the different channels and to make people to understand actually it's a job opening kind of thing, despite it has to go through that RFP process. So yeah, we definitely want people to be able to see it

thank you ray thank you jennifer is next with the human services transportation plan yes i'm just going to stand here in the corner instead of the podium um we have done ray has been describing this process what he's calling meeting agreed to meetings with county officials and so far we've done that um Kankakee County, McLean County, obviously, because they're right upstairs or right around the corner. And we will be going to the Ford County County Board meeting on Monday night. And it looks as though there's a possibility for scheduling Livingston County next week sometime. Or there was an email, right?

Oh, there is.

Trust me. Yeah, I believe I got that to you. Anyway, that just leaves Iroquois. It's possible that we will do Iroquois. And Iroquois is a big county and area with a very small population. And it's a struggle to get them served. So we're looking forward to having that conversation with them. Next quarterly meeting of our HSCP Region 6, what is now the planning committee, is on, we're going to try and schedule it for September 14th. We have a survey ready to go, which we plan to release soon in mid-August. And one of the things we'll do at the meeting in September is encourage all the participants in the planning committee to help us make sure that this survey gets wide distribution and response so that we'll ask the county board members and the 5310 social service agencies and everyone else who's involved to sort of help us push it out there and make sure we hit the right channels. So that will be an agenda item for September, along with our ongoing preparation for update of the regional plan, which is due next March. And we'll be talking about how the planning committee is going to work and again, reminding them of the survey release. And then we are currently acquiring, through our friends at the Census Bureau, the most recent demographic data for the counties in Region 6. And unfortunately, we did that relatively recently. So we're not expecting to see a huge change. Of course, we're having to use the American Community Survey because we're in between census counts. So four or five years from now, we do this again. we would be looking at the census but in this instance we can't because the ACS is the only game in town and it is not full count of the population but a limited sort of partial survey in places where the Census Bureau thinks there might be change and so that gets averaged across five years and we hope that that will be released in timely fashion early next year so that we can sub in the 2025 data going back five years from then and have a slightly more recent update. But we'll not know that until sometime in January, probably. So that's what's going on with HSTV. Questions?

Yeah. Thank you. The Veterans Corporate Corridor Plan update.

Thank you. Really exciting time of this planning process, almost two years. Some of you serve on the project steering committee, but we appreciate that. We have most recently received the draft final plan from the consultant. We will be putting that on, actually we have put that on our website. I will be sending the commission members the link and see if I can even attach like a PDF or link to a PDF, because it's pretty lost memory size that we'll take up. But we'll start pushing out for public review and comments through the end of this month. And if you haven't picked up yet, at the end of the table, there's a flyer that we will be using to encourage the public and anybody to be viewing comments. And we have the English and the Spanish version. We will provide that on both sides for you to pick up a copy on your way out. So we have... Other than electronic version that people can be on their cell phone, iPad, computer or not, also we have hard copies available at our office in normal Wilmington Public Library. We'll be sending e-version also to some of the rural public libraries. We'll have copies. at the town normal office and also a copy of the city of Bloomington office. So please get help to get the word out. It's really, you know, two years. It's not a short amount of time. The consultants have helped us through the process. Many of the professionals and individuals the table here and helping us on the process. So it's coming down to that wire, so to speak. And if you recall, we also will be scheduling an informational presentation by the consultant as part of our MCRPC September meeting, which We'll confirm the date, but it looks like it's still going to be on September the 2nd. Seems like 6 p.m. would work for most of the commissioners, but you'll be getting an email from me confirming that, but just so you know. But other than that, yeah, it's exciting. We know that through public information, engagement activities during this two-year process. We have professionals, we have people from really different sectors that look at it and provide input and different groups that help us and provide feedback along the process. So we also know that it's not going to be implemented overnight. It's going to be a multi-year process. But there's a starting point somewhere, right? There'll be further studies, IDOT, federal government, but let's start with that plan. And so we will be asking for your consideration for adopting the plan. That's what we're considering later in September for that special meeting. So we can meet the deadline for the federal grant that have to fund, possibly fund this project. So I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Yeah, and I just want to highlight in terms of feedback on the plan, you know, the late September meeting, would that be timely feedback because it needs to be adopted and meet the 9 30 deadline so just want to remind everyone you know that's why we have the early september presentation where the consultants will they be here in person or they will be online yeah so where where we cannot give feedback or whoever chooses to attend so just kind of want to put that reminder out there that the late september meeting it's not as timely

Yeah, our hope is public comments will be received by the end of this month, right? And so changes, if appropriate, can be made. Hopefully not that many changes need to be made. The presentation on September the 2nd will be pretty much kind of informational. And also we will be inviting members from the county board, you know, Wilmington City Council members, town council members, and also the mayors from the rural communities. Kind of an open invitation, but we encourage them to take advantage of the opportunity to better understand the process and the end result and all the different considerations that have been taken on this project. And also, it's your regular meeting, so it's a public meeting anyway. intend to invite your elected officials.

Thank you. Any questions, comments? Moving on to the Regional Comprehensive Plan 2045 update.

Hubei and Luke. Before Luke gets ready for the updates, Luke is our new interim project coordinator for this project because Anthony Bauman has moved on. You might run into him in this building, but he's not working for us. But he has done a great job. He spent a lot of time and energy on this project. But we're also thankful that the other committee planner, Luke, is helping us through the process while we're in the process of recruiting for another planet, too. So, Luke, any updates you want to give?

Hello again, everyone. So, like I already said, I'm the interim project coordinator for the comp plan. I'm opening this as a one, two, one, three. All right, so where are we in the process? So round one of the public engagement just ended on July 31st. So what we've done, we did workshops and a visioning survey. So workshops, we held four in-person workshops in Lexington, LeRoy, the McLean County Farm Bureau, and the Bloomington Public Library, and then one virtual workshop between June and July. From these workshops, we engaged with 38 members of the public. And then we also attended multiple events, such as Farmers' Markets, Pack the Park, and Pride Fest to promote the comp family. And then in terms of the visioning survey, we received 469 responses. 76% of the responses are from Bloomington Normal, and then 24% from the rural or unincorporated areas. So for reference, McLean County has a 77% to 23% urban and rural split.

So the responses pretty much reflects the proportion of the .

However, I'm not saying that 469, we've gotten questions, oh, that's a pretty low number. So if you have questions about that, let me know after this. So top responses from the survey. First question, why do you choose to live within the county? Top answers are family and friends. proximity to employment, and quality of life.

Second, what do you think is McLean County's greatest strength?

Top answers are people and community, agriculture, and education. What do you think is McLean County's greatest weakness? Top answer is housing, other, which includes taxes and affordability, and water and sewer infrastructure. And then another question, what is your biggest concern about the future of McLean County? Top answer, data centers and property taxes. So what's next? NCRPC staff will produce the following documents before the round two public engagement. So first is the round one public engagement outreach report. So now that Ms. Juliana is on board, so she will be helping us generate this. And then FCRPC staff also has a proposed, a vision statement proposed by FCRPC staff subject to the discussion with the PSC. So the proposed vision statement is, in 2045, McLean County will be safe, affordable, and sustainable where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and enjoy a good quality of life. So we'll still be presenting this to the PSC, but this came from the vision and activities that we did, as well as some of the responses from the survey. And also as part of the wrap up of round one, we are working on a draft existing conditions report. And in preparation for round two of public engagement, MCRPC staff will also work on the round two survey instrument, round two workshops, and the focus group discussions. So just to clarify, round one was focused on Colson's division of the comp plan, whereas round two will focus on teasing out the objectives, the policies, and action items for the comprehensive plan. And then the next PSC meeting will be next week, August 11. Do we have any questions about the comp plan? Can you talk about the water storage structure?

Do you have a breakdown of the 24%? Was it rural, metro? Do you have it?

Can you break it down further on that question?

Maybe you didn't collect it that way. So we collected, like, among the 24%, how many people said it's water and sewer. That's something we can do. It's possible, but it's like... I'm not really sure. I mean, we do have, we know answers from the rural areas. I don't know how many people use it. We might. I'm not really sure. I'm just curious. Thank you.

Will you be publishing the survey results?

Yes, so that's why we're going to do the public engagement outreach report. So that will be the public-facing document. People will see the results of the outreach workshops and the survey.

And then the steering committee met in July, as I understand it. Commissioner O'Rourke, do you have any comments or takeaways from that?

Is that to me? Yes. I was unavailable. That's why I'm joining today. I feel bad. I've been missing June and July. So I will be attending the one upcoming. I just have a root canal that's happening. So that's why I'm home. No comment at this time.

How has attendance been at this training committee?

I think in person, close to that. And virtual, I think last meeting we had like two, if I recall correctly, two members joined us virtually. Any other questions?

Thank you. Thank you.

And final items for discussion, Metropolitan Transportation Plan .

Yes, I'm trying to keep it short. I'm very pleased to announce that we set August 28th as the date for the launch of the working group for this project. And we'll do it right before the policy committee meeting that day, because there's some commonality between people steering committee, working group, and the people who serve on the policy committee or who appear for the policy committee. Speaking of surveys, we also have a survey for this project. It's already ready to go. And we're thinking in terms so as to not create survey confusion any more than we have to, that we will release that electronically and as much as we can, distributed around the urban area, next, the end of next week. So the 14th, which is, you know, the Friday or possibly the weekend. I am working on creating an introductory chapter, which is pretty much drafted and the existing conditions for transportation within the urbanized area chapter, which is chapter two drafts now. And I'm also assisting with the existing conditions report regarding transportation for the county plan. So there's gonna be a certain amount of commonality between those two documents. We are preparing and getting ready to prepare for focus groups over the fall, getting our list of people together of who we want to bring in to talk about various topics, and we'll be sending a kind of save the date invitation in September so that people know when to sort of sketch out some time. We can set up a schedule and go ahead with those. And finally, we have a draft population projection report, which is still under review, we hope, for the last time by local governments. And we hope to have that ready to plug into the the rest of the data for the plan so that we have numbers to use to talk about what the future of transportation might be here and what we should aim for. And that's where we are right now. Any questions? I do want to emphasize the metropolitan transportation plan is just what it sounds like, metropolitan. It focuses on the urbanized area of Bloomington and Normal and the immediate surroundings. So Tawana and Downs are part of our metropolitan planning area, and various other, Twin Grove out on the west side, and Shirley and so on. Not a lot of population, but the news we want to hear about the efficacy of the transportation system in the urban area. And of course, one of the things we will be talking about is the impact of Veterans Parkway in our shiny new plan. So we'll talk about that a little bit later in September too. Thank you.

Question. Is Carlock part of the metropolitan area?

No, it isn't. It's close enough that it's probably something we would take up. I know there have been inquiries about a number of things, about transit service. And of course, Connect Go is serving rural McLean County now as part of Connect Transit. And anyone in Carlock would be eligible to use that as one of their options for getting into normal or elsewhere. They connect those information on their website. So that does exist. I don't see any immediate prospect of expanding the Connect Transit service up to Carleton because it really is pretty much confined to original for a lot of reasons. We don't know what their future plans are with regard to their flex service, which is currently a pilot project. It's been going on for at least a couple of years now in southwest Bloomington. It does extend beyond the actual boundary line of the city of Bloomington. But they're also talking about doing that in other parts of the community where there isn't a direct transit line that adequately serves people. And that's going to be a long-term wish list, something that we can talk to.

How about Hudson?

Hudson's a little further out from our boundary, and I actually thought it was possible, given that they've expanded to the south, that they would also be included if they have not been this time around. We have not had real change in our metropolitan planning area in actually quite some time. So although Hudson is growing, it's not growing close enough to be brought into the metropolitan planning area. So as with Carlock or some of the other small communities, we can allude to it, but it's not part of the planning area according to the federal government's standards for these projects. And this is very much a document that is established and requirements set by the Federal Highway Administration. So we have to sort of check those boxes. And one of the things we've just discovered is that a report we've been doing for the entire county on federal investment year actually should just be for the metropolitan planning area. So we're going to be talking to HyDOT about that and say, before we do this, let's make sure we're doing the right thing. And if there are any other questions.

If I may just add some information, background. So basically, it's every 10 years, because the census. So the federal government look at population distribution, and there's some formula to set the boundaries. The most recent 2020 census, based on the population numbers, did not warrant the change from the prior. So it hasn't been changed for a while. So it went to the results from the 2030 census to see if the boundaries will be adjusted or not, to what extent.

I was just curious. It's interesting. those outlining areas are certainly a challenge for Unit 5 because of just the large square of miles that we cover to transport students to school. So it makes it a challenge, but I certainly understand there's definitions and rules. But it's interesting.

In making this determination about the size and scope of the metropolitan planning area, it's a very complicated formula. Obviously, population is at the core, but the Census Bureau and Federal Highway also look at obstructions, like geographic features or whatever that might create a barrier rivers we don't have one that is implied here but so it's a very complicated process usually the last time we did it full scale it took more than two years to reset the boundaries and that's when it took in twin grove out to the west and some of the residential areas that are not incorporated but which are an influence that's great so while we have that boundary that's what we call the mpa the metropolitan planning area

But we recognize that people from outside the boundaries, I mean, they come to the area within the boundary and vice versa. And so when we engage or undertake that process, the planning process, we do take into account, although by the survey, I mean, if people from outside the boundaries want to take it, yeah, we all want the power, because there's people who live outside the boundaries, they come to work within the boundaries, and people who live within the boundaries, then they go out to recreation, to whatever purposes and trips. So we definitely, it's not something, oh, we just, this we guide, you know. But things will be facing that.

Yeah, I'm just curious. Good to know. Before I throw out to the rest of the commission, Ray, I'd like to follow up on, I guess, the formal announcement about Anthony. So can you summarize for us the current openings and recruiting?

Sure, sure. We currently have advertisement with what we have. two openings. One is the one as a result of Anthony's departure. And then the other one is as a result of Anthony's plenitude, what we call a community planner. We also have Planner 3 which is we call it Associate Planner and so that is a new position that we have requested the County Board to consider for approval because it's their HR system thing and so we got their support and they did position and that position is funded as part of the annual IDOC budget. So we are still waiting for, because IDA's fiscal year starts right first, right? We have yet to receive the agreements, which is somewhat unusual for the state fiscal year 27. But that position is going to be funded primarily by the IDA. So what was the job description of this? Yeah. Planet three means. Planet three, a lot to do. So let me extend that to currently, well, prior to county board's approval, we have planet one, planet two position and planet four. We did not have a planet three for whatever reasons. And I could guess because when we became part of the county government, in 2018, 2019, this based on, you know, the employees there, and there was, wasn't at Planet 3 at that time. That's why there's a gap. And so now we've filled the gap by having this position. So Planet 3, I see that as a lot of primary transportation planning for one, because we have so many transportation related projects, but also there will be community planning type. We have just so much going on. And the person who can't reach the gap between Plan 2 and Plan 4, so with more experience and also potential to move on and also a few years of experience in transportation planning and also community-type labor planning and data. Could be housing also. That person also will provide support. But I think the focus still will be somewhat on the transportation side. And to help to alleviate the burden of Dan, our senior transportation.

Another point is that Ray and I have been talking for the last year or so about succession planning because I am 68 years old. and I'm not going to be around forever. They're just going to come in and decide to retire. And having someone on board who could, you know, learn to deal with the issues that we have in transportation planning are willing to normally handle the county while I'm still around so that they can just step in when the time comes. I think some of you have noticed that I had some health challenges earlier this year, which I'm still recovering from. And that was kind of a wake-up call that we need to start Maybe, sure, we could bridge that gap.

It's not going anywhere right away, but it's a possibility. Certainly. I mean, it's evident from the reports that you give. There's a lot of historical context and knowledge and background that is valuable. So it'll be nice to tap that and pass that on to someone.

Yeah, that's the idea.

All right. Thanks, Jennifer. Sure. Is there anything else that needs to come before the commission this afternoon? Is there a motion to adjourn? Oh, you hesitated. Just a second. All in favor? Aye. The August 5th, 2026 meeting of the McLean County Regional Planning Commission is adjourned at 4.45 p.m.