Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, the final commission for meeting for September the 9th to order at six o'clock.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All call jerking your vice chair of on it.

Commissioner of how it's in the other medical procedure.

Commissioner could out there. Mr. Miller, their mission or part of their commissioner and then there.

There are extra this year.

Oh, that's a personal argument.

Right. Thank you. I remember or is public comments as that is available for anyone. The odds are soon or but the comments on planning commission business that is not on the agenda. Is there anyone on the settlement reading their hand for public comment.

I don't think

Okay, let the record show there's no one in the audience. So we'll move on then to item five is approval of the minutes. These would be for the June 10th minutes, our last meeting. I had received information from staff that the minutes are only transcribed to the point of AI from the video And they are not broken down into a consolidated form that would be acceptable for us to approve. So we're tabling those to a time that they can be done. We were given the option to review them ourselves and to make those cut downs. And after looking at it, it is six pages of a lot of conversation. So the other thing is, I found out the city council has one of the counselors doing that and listened to their tape and they had problems going back and forth about what was said, what wasn't said. And I decided we're not doing that. We're just waiting for a professional third party. So therefore we will table the minutes until someone has the chance to review. Mr. Chair.

Yes. And just to report status, As you know, Lori, the city recorder, has been on sick leave. I'm meeting with her tomorrow. I think she's going to come back. We will retain Colleen to help out and slowly phase Lori if she chooses to come back into her job. All right. And that'll make some of the pressure off on the minutes.

Thank you, sir. All right. So we'll move on to item number six is unfinished business. I'm assuming we have no unfinished business. There's none on the agenda. Any of the counselors, any unfinished business? Hearing none, we'll move on to item number seven is new business. There's no new business on the agenda. And we will, if there's anything that's coming in the works, we'll review that. and our planning commission comments. So if there is no new business for many of the commissioners.

Do you know what the status is of the June code discussions?

I believe we'll be we I know that this austin was going to give a update on that and uh is that something you want to do under new business or the land use applications or find commission comments

Um, this is fine. Um, good evening, everyone. I'm glad to be here with you. I did have a chance to look through the city's files and find the June code packet. Um, it does not look like any notification was sent out. So there is draft code that seems to reflect recent changes in state law. as well as non-conforming use standards that I know this group has been working on, and some procedural changes, again, probably related to state law changes, particularly regarding residential development. So that packet, I haven't had a lot of time to go through it in detail. There's no staff report in the file, so that makes sense that there's no notice to DLCD because that goes as part of the package. So it is something that could be moved forward in the coming months if we're able to provide DLCD notice. I don't know if it needs to start with a work session with this group or if you've already had the chance to do that. I unfortunately don't have any contact with your former staff to know any of those details. Are there any specific questions?

sorry this uh commissioner i was just curious on it um because i had thought staff had told us that it was noticed to dlcb at our june meeting and it was scheduled for uh presentation july and then the public hearing in august so i think it was moved further along i i'm not

I can't say with 100% certainty, but to answer a question I believe I saw about what happens if we've already noticed, you can always toggle those dates in the DLCD notification online platform. In fact, that happens quite often. So there's no re-noticing required once you've noticed if in fact we have. I can work with DLCD staff to get access back for North Plains to be able to go in through the administration side and see what's been put in there. I couldn't find anything on the viewer side. But yeah, even if it was noticed in June to say we'll have hearings in July and August, it's no problem to change that.

And if it hasn't been, is it too late to add stuff to additional items today?

No, you can, whatever goes into the packet 35 days prior to the first evidentiary hearings, that'd be your group. Um, that is the packet. Um, again, you do have to put a staff report in with that. So you'd want to have all of the language plus the staff report, um, talking about those proposed changes, ready to go 35 days before your first hearing.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, also for your information, I am meeting with our planning consultant on Monday at one. I will add this topic to a potential work project for them so we can get professional planning involved in that process.

Is that with Brian Feeney with 3J?

It is.

Okay. I will see if I can make that meeting as well so we can talk from the planning side because he's the city engineer. So I'll see if I can get an invite for that and clear my calendar.

So if you're going to attend, I'm going to move it to 4 a.m. What's that, 1 o'clock?

On next Monday.

Yes.

That should work great.

Yeah. Just to add that Heather Austin is our 3J contact to the Planning Commission, so for the planner, so obviously she should be part of it if possible. Right. And I think that it's appropriate that we probably set a work session for our next meeting in October because I think we all need to regroup and get back. So make sure we're all on the same page as we move the package forward. So even any information that you can get out to us before that so that we can prepare for it and also come up with questions and thoughts to send to you, please let us know.

That sounds great. I'll plan to in the next week or so review everything in a little finer detail and then package that up with some staff memo thoughts to get out to your group with plenty of time to have time to think about that and respond for our work session in October.

Any other questions from commissioners? All right. Just to show that we're up to date on everything since we're now working with a new planner. I think if we could make some kind of arrangement before our next meeting to maybe if, I don't know if you're available to come into town or something to meet with myself and the SID manager and go over some points that we'd like to cover.

Yeah, that sounds, that sounds good. That sounds like a good way to approach that. If that works for city manager Cook.

That would be the ideal way of doing it. Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. If there's nothing else on the new business, we'll move on to item number eight is the land use applications and the city project monthly report. appears that we have no land use applications in our packet. So do you know if there's any land use applications that have been submitted?

I do. There was a backlog of about six weeks worth when I was brought in about three weeks ago. It did not occur to me to keep those in the log because that's not been something I've done in a while. So I will need to update that. There have been several sign permits, a couple of residential solar panel installations. The only staff level design review has been on West Union Road for an existing industrial site that is removing a building on the rear of the property and putting a new building on. That is the only application of a design review, but I will definitely find those logs and start them again for you.

All right. Thank you. And are you aware of any new items that are becoming before the Planning Commission?

No, there are no items in the queue to go before Planning Commission.

Okay, great. Thank you. And B is the planning consultant or planning consultant project monthly paid report. We don't have anything in our package on that. We usually get a copy of that. So could staff make sure we receive copies of that for our next meeting? Yes. All right. Thank you. And there's nothing else under the I don't a the land use applications that the 3 J. The city project on the board for 3 J we'll move on to item number 9 is the planning commission comment there any comment from the plan to mention.

The commissioner Miller maybe you know. bring me up to speed on Heather's role. I think I missed something.

Okay. Um, I think that would be maybe an appropriate time for, uh, just introductions. Yeah. Since everyone is new to this, uh, process of going on because now, uh, 3J, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, And a jerk but 3 J that's all that's been hired as the new city planner right under contract and the other Austin is the representative from 3 J. And so obviously I think other is familiar with all of us great that you want to do on the fine commission though other than our new it from the manager. So just go ahead and go around and state your name and just a little bit about yourself.

Lonnie O'Dell and I don't know, I don't think I've been on the planning commission so it's been for a while. I don't know what you want to say.

Let's see. Doug Denningkamp, I've been on the planning commission for I don't know how many years either. I've been a member of the community in North Plains since 77 and I recently retired. Commissioner Levante.

Hello, Levante. I've been on the Planning Commission for a while as well, resident of North Plains since 96. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Um, yeah, I enjoy doing this. I really have enjoyed actually digging into the code and it's kind of been a pet peeve of mine. So I am trying to make lots of notes things I want to see updated. Yes. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Miller.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Kind of where I think I've been on mission five years and resident North Plains for a lot longer than that and HAB-Masyn Moyer- Looking forward to working with you again at it.

The mayor of our commissioner or not the part of early you need to the resident right now. I'm going to be here looking forward to working with you know. And the video.

A couple of the board. I don't know how to report your. And my name is Stewart and the chair. of the Planning Commissions and Administrators in 2001, on the Planning Commission in 1995, moved into North Plains in 1994. All right, thank you all. So is there any other Planning Commission comments? I have one. I sent an email to the City Manager and Hopefully, that it was going for city council, but apparently this bank it for the beating. Last night, but in the August 17 meeting of the city council during public comments Emily Walden got up and said that the Planning Commission wasn't meeting because they were waiting for a permanent city manager and a permanent city planner. So kind of took exception to that because I know I've reached out to then interim city manager from authority to try to get our July 8th meeting scheduled, which I was told that there was no, the city plan, the assistant planner was on vacation and there was no recorder and no staff to prepare. So I told her that the city would need to cancel the meeting. And then again, in our August 12th meeting, I got a hold of interim city manager Ross Schultz and asked him about the meeting, but they had hired three days then, but Heather Austin was on vacation until that Monday before the meeting, and there was not sufficient time to give notice for a meeting, so the city had to cancel that meeting. So the concern that that people will say things that aren't true, that hopefully city councilors will believe in everything they hear. The other thing is during the meetings, the councilor residents wanted to know why we weren't meeting. And in my letter, I explained that we need the same things that city council need. We need to have some staff put together an agenda. We need to have staff file the materials for the meeting. We need to have staff notified the meeting, properly notified. We need to have staff set up the room for a meeting. We need to have a recorder. So these things, you know, the City Council fairly puts together, but the Planning Commission, the Economic Development Commission, and the Park Board Commission, they don't have those opportunities. And that's why we're not meeting. So We need to get on board and get back to work. Also, there was concerns that Emily brought up about her great plan to ban data centers. And she said that she can't bring it to the Planning Commission. So I just wanted to make sure that everyone that's aware that we're under no imminent attack from data centers. The city doesn't have the power grid for data centers. The city controls water supply for data centers. And currently we don't have enough land inside of the current UGP that it would be appropriate for construction of a data center. So we don't need to worry about doing a ban. We just need to work on our code changes for a newer expansion because that's when we should address how we want to deal with data centers. The other thing I just wanted to bring up is I know that most of the city council is somewhat against any urban growth expansion, but all of the city council are on the renewal agency and they have the Glencoe opportunity area that they want to develop. And I just find it very difficult for them to ask some developer They come into the city of North Plains and spend millions of dollars to develop a commercial site. While on the other hand, the city council says, we don't want to grow. We don't want to give you potential new customers. That's going to be a hard bullet to chew on. So I think you need to consider an urban growth expansion. There has to be, there's a lot of positive things in an expansion if it's done correctly. So just wanted to get that out there so everybody was aware of it. So with that, we'll move on to item number 10 and city council comments.

Thank you, sir. I came here because I wanted to set you guys up for success in having alignment with the city council and also so that we're aligned on those goals and we're aligned on the resources to do those goals. So I think so. I'm not an insider right here. What I'm just trying to do is kind of bring awareness to this. I think in spring of this year, there was, we had a good work session together with Bill and Rowan, but I didn't feel like we came to a conclusion. So I would like for us to make sure that we're all going in the same direction and that we provided the resources that the team needs to be successful. And right now, I don't feel like I could say that we would accomplish that. So I wanted to start that conversation so that you guys can be successful. Thank you. Any other comments, Councillor DeLorde? No. If you guys have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them.

City Manager Cook?

Yeah, picking up on what Mark mentioned, and we got a little bit there with Heather. This issue is getting pretty close to the top of my 9,210 priority list, but it is critical that we begin focusing on planning. That's why my goal on Monday with the planning consultant is to get staff who plays the appropriate role with the Planning Commission and does the things that need to be done, we know that it doesn't work effectively parceling it out to 67 other city staff, people who already have a full agenda. So I want to get that organized and working properly. And then we need, as Mark points out, there needs to be a joint session, I think, between the Planning Commission and the Council where you guys come to agreement is what's our long-term vision and how are we going to get there? I can tell you right now, this morning, we got our first response to the Glencoe property that hasn't even been prepared yet. So we already have a company that wants to look at coming into the community and we're not even ready for it. But yes, my goal is to get this organized and functioning the way that it should.

I would think that a joint meeting with the city council would be a good thing. I would definitely like to have our workshop first. Yes. Just so that we all know where we're at, where we're going to get regrouped now with the change in city planners. And to have our city plan and catch up. So anytime after that I would I think would be appropriate. Thank you. Any questions to the City Council.

If I can. Sure. Just to point out, last night I was authorized by the Council to get proposals to do a full-time city manager search. This is real critical for the whole community. If we aren't organized and functioning properly, you're not going to get the right city manager. So it's real incumbent upon us to get over the next 90 days, and it could take as much as 120 days to get a new city manager, to get organized so you don't bring a new person in saying, here's our mess, clean it up. We've got to clean up the mess.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

All right. If there's no other comments or questions for City Council, then we'll move to item 11, which is staff and planning commission discussion, which we kind of already covered. You said there's nothing new. So we will look forward to some new projects coming into town. And if there's any other planning commission business, Hearing none, our next regular meeting will be October the 14th at 6 o'clock, and soon we will have a workshop, and that's to be determined if it will be at 5 o'clock. Ms. Austin, if you could determine if that works for you, and if it...

Wait, I'm sorry, did you say workshop at 5 o'clock?

Yeah, it will be after then.

Some of us worked till five.

Okay. Well, then it would have to be after the meeting. That's fine. So after the meeting, are you available for our next scheduled meeting to be in person?

Yes, I believe so. I don't know right off the top of my head, but yes, I'll make it happen.

Okay. Well, our next regular meeting will start at six o'clock and we'll have a workshop after that then.

Okay.

And you're good. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just keep in mind that we're going to be contracting for a replacement for the roof on this building, so that's going to create some difficulty in holding meetings in here, we think. So we're going to be coordinating the construction with the meeting schedule. We may move your meeting somewhere else. I can't guarantee it yet, but we will find a place to meet.

Okay. So our next regular scheduled meeting will be October the 14th at 6 o'clock location to be determined with a workshop following. If there's no other commission business, we'll adjourn at 7, or excuse me, 627.

Thank you.

Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Heather. Thank you.