Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

HEAT. HEAT. YEP. Welcome everybody to the December 11th, 2025 planning commission meeting. I'm going to get our agendas up as our screens aren't available at the moment. But can we do uh roll call please for attendance? Commissioner Simmons here. Blake here. Made here. Kener Ciphford here. Montgomery Keys here. Johnson and Wat Loy. Here we do have a quorum. So I'll move forward. We have minutes to approve from the November 13, 2025 meeting. Take a motion. I'll move to approve the minutes as presented. Support moved and supported to approve the minutes of November 13, 2025. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed say no. Hearing none. Minutes are approved. And I do believe we previously had items on the agenda that have been withdrawn. Is that correct? Yes. Our public hearing uh the applicant has withdrawn the request. Sounds good. So then we just had some updates from staff and intention to review um some of our planning going forward. Yes. Uh Sarah did a really good job of putting together our annual report uh which can come out now since we're not having any agenda items. So, if you want

to take some time over the next month and look at uh everything we've done this year, uh it kind of outlines all the cases and what planning commission recommended and what the city commission uh voted on. And um you can come back next month if you have any corrections and then we'll post it on our website. It's part of our redevelopment ready communities uh one of the requirements to maintain that status. We'll put that on our website. Okay. Okay. So, you have handed out the 2024 planning commission annual report just for reference, I presume, and then 2025 as well. And then we also have some suggested master plan goals that we could consider looking at. And then a specific master plan progress report. So, quite a few things to go over. Was your intention to have any specific discussion on these items today? Uh, no. I'm sorry I couldn't get this out earlier. was out sick a couple days last week, so that kind of hampered our progress. But if you take a look at this, uh, printed out a little oddly, but this goes over all of our goals and our action steps that were listed in the master plan. Um, a green check mark next to the recommendation shows that we've made progress on it. It doesn't mean it's complete, but that we've just made progress on it. The check mark mean the highlighted green? Yes, just highlighted green. And then the yellow highlighted just goes over what we've done for that specific goal. So, we've done a lot so far in our master plan. We've done a really good job keeping on task. And you'll see there are some that we have not gotten started at yet, but it's a 20-year plan, so we've got uh plenty of time to start working on things. And we can use this to also generate some of the goals that we want to have for 2026. We'll vote on the goals at the January meeting in 2026. Uh but I just listed some potential ones to get us talking and have a discussion if you would like

today. Understood. So when I first joined, I did get a actual copy of the master plan in print because it was easier for me to review it that way. There are lots of goals. Um yeah, if anybody needs hard copy, we can print that for you. But otherwise, we should be able to download it as a PDF um from the internet and then we can kind of make notes and go through it. That's what I would suggest doing over the next month and dig in real deep, maybe some places that you haven't had an opportunity to look at before and see if there's something that maybe we should be putting a little bit more attention on um at least conversational wise. So, some of these goals to consider that have been presented to us, commercial zoning districts, consolidating some business zones such as B1, B2. Um would you mind giving us maybe a couple background on these? Yeah, so we have some we have five different zoning districts for business that don't include our formbbased code. B1 and B2 are pretty similar. I'm not sure if there really needs to be a distinction between the two. B3 doesn't even exist anymore. Uh that's kind of been taken over by our downtown context area for our formbbased code. Um this kind of goes in part with the second one of eliminating obsolete zoning designations. RT has really been replaced by R districts now that we allow duplexes. Again, D3 uh really doesn't need to be in there. So, we can take a look at all of our separate zoning designations and see really if there are any duplicates in there. Now, we don't need to have all of them. And the signage updates, that's something we've started to take a look at. Um I don't know if anybody has any opinions on signage. Signage is sometimes a hot topic issue. So, I have a strong opinion on signage in that I think if a sign exists, it needs to be maintained and visible and communicate what it's supposed to communicate, right? So, for example, I ran into a sign on Sherman that was telling about, you know, the ferry and what have it was right behind another sign telling you the same thing. And so,

I reported that to DPW and they removed that, right? There's two signs right next to each other that over time had just materialized and now you're confused. Is it all going to the same place? So, is there a setback on signage too? Cuz the the one thing that I get in living over by the Lakeside district is sometimes those signs are put out so far that you've got to really stick your car out in order to see. Some districts have a setback requirement, some don't. All of them have a clear vision requirement though. Clear vision from where I guess is the the piece that I want. A lot of them are existing before the ordinance. coming out onto Sherman back there. There's a lot of signs that I mean, you really got to push your nose out there before you can see. Um, so that that's my only thing. I love the fact that we've eased up a little bit on the signage and the buildings downtown. I like the variety. I think it looks great. That's something I would like to discuss because sometimes in the planning department, we don't always agree on downtown signs. Uhhuh. They're different. The Hines building has them kind of randomly placed all over. Some people like that, some people don't. I kind of like where the business is at, but at the same time, maybe it's a little cleaner the other way. So, so maybe visual examples of things would be great to look at. You had a question? I'm good. Okay. Um, yeah, I think there was, you know, a question came to me or a misunderstanding perhaps about whether or not you could have signage, you know, perpendicular to the building on Third Street. Um there seemed to be some perception that you could not do that. Yeah, you definitely can't. So because when I stand on Third Street, I don't see, you know, what businesses are here. And so from Hackley Park, you can barely tell that there's a business. Yeah. And some of the new downtown buildings are doing a good job of incorporating both type of signs. Like the Leonard has the wall signs, but they also have those perpendicular signs as well. So you can see that at the street level. I love it. I I love the variety. I think it really mixes it up. Um

All right. We'll also think about maybe um some things that drive around over the next couple weeks and see if there's something that we could improve upon or clarify for folks. I think that's the big question here is how can people be, you know, able to use um their signage aotment to the best of their ability and also, you know, keep it up. I I can I keep going on this because some of these are very interesting. The one the one on updating landscaping requirements. Okay. Yeah. I'd like to hear what your thoughts are. Well, we've been considering some landscaping uh requirement updates. Uh whether that's uh requiring more uh especially for our new build houses. Um we usually ask well we are required they are required to provide at least one canopy tree. It does not state that it has to be in the terrace, but we usually encourage that so we can get more street trees, but maybe there's a way we can require two. Maybe one in the front or backyard and a street tree if unless there is already one there. Um, so different things like that. Um, I think our business zones to have a pretty good landscaping uh requirements, but there's also parts uh in the master plan that talk about vegetative buffers near the waterfront and cleaning the water before it gets back into the waterershed. Uh, so there's some things we could do with requiring that or maybe even incentivizing that. And the question also would be, you know, in the future. So, for example, I'm going to call them out, but the Dollar General on Lake has a lot of dead trees. I got one that's kind of pointing at the building like this now. So, I'm sure it looked great for a minute, but now it would be better without those trees. So, those are some exceeding and they that's um right an internal policy, too. It's something I've considered that, you know, maybe it's something that has to be put in the ordinance, but you have to maintain it for x amount of years and replace something like that. Yeah. And you've always made the comment on um making sure that there's trees that are not deciduous, which is interesting thought, not that I

personally care, but I do completely agree that it's nice to have some of that greenery year round. And the reason I think about it honestly is because when I've had the opportunity to travel with especially even within Michigan, so many other towns just feel greener. And a lot of them it's because we just cleared our forest out and we became urban very soon and we never replicated that. A lot of smaller towns have allowed you know more white pine more you know kind of forest type trees to remain part of their community. So when you when you come to Moskegan versus you know even places like Sagatuck or you know up to Lington there's just more trees and so in the winter I feel sad. Yeah. And I I like that too. We've got residential lot width maximums. So, in our formbbased code, uh you might notice that there are maximum lot widths uh for a single family home and duplexes, it's 66 feet wide. Now, some of those lots already exists as larger, so they're fine to keep it that way, but this would prevent uh people from combining three, four, five lots, which has been done in the past. We could highlight some lots in the city that some are combined into like eight lots. Um, so we have that restriction in our formbbased code, but we don't in our art district. So I think it, you know, with all the work we've done on zoning reform and encouraging um proper development and usage of property and land that it might be worth implementing that citywide. Why would we do that? Uh, so we don't have people that grab up six lots from the land bank and combine them and create untaxable, unbuildable lots that really used to have homes on them but no longer will. They they are buildable though, right? I mean, if they they could Well, they're buildable, but if somebody combines them and wants to hold on to them, then um there's not really not much we can do if they're they're holding lot holding lots and not developing them. and what it

does. But but are you talking about um somebody that has a home on those lots? Yeah. So, we have uh there's a a good example over on the east side. Um and there's a house on the main lot and they bought three lots in each direction and combined them into one super parcel. Now, we can't prevent them from buying lots, but we could prevent them from combining them and fencing them in. So, uh, that's something Moskegan Heights has done over the past couple years, which has been really effective. They were having people buy three, four lots at a time and just fencing them in for super yards and that really prevents anybody else from buying them and building houses. So, makes sense. So, the question comes down to whether, you know, there's an intention for density, right? um or otherwise, you know, it has a much more suburban um aesthetic removes the opportunity for housing to be um maximized within the space that we have. And so that would be the reason for doing that. I also have listed low impact design standards that again kind of goes with some of the landscaping around the watershed, things that we can do to improve the water quality and filtrating water before it ends up in the waterhed. Was there a design standard you wanted us to consider? No, but many many communities have what's called a low impact design standard and it can take many forms. Usually uh parking lots, landscaping, um what do they call it when the water runs right into the landscaping area? Sort of like a swale. Yep. Oh, that's that'd be wonderful. I have always desired for folks who are doing development to at least have those items presented to them. Right? These are options and ways and have you considered the following because some folks just have don't have that educational

background and and you know it may not be feasible in in some areas. Um but maybe there's a way to incentivize it like if you're going to do a low impact design parking lot maybe you're allowed a little bit larger lot things like that. Great idea. some examples of places where it's actually working would be useful. Like we all like good ideas, but we always expect somebody to get mad about it. So, we like to see where it's working and what they got out of it, right? We'll have to be careful when we work on that one. I um a low impact design would be like your whole entire front yard being wild flowers. That would be considered low impact. You got to be careful with that one because some people consider I mean, what's a weed, right? So there you got lots of requests every year about that. Yes. Yes. So we got to make sure that we're very descriptive when we start talking about those. We do allow native vegetation plants. Yeah. And we should and we do get some people that try to insinuate a weed is a natural plant, which technically it might be. Right. So we need to be very definitive on that, don't we? Where we you request that your yard is a native bee habitat or a butterfly. There's there was an opportunity for that where you could basically designate your yard as a Sure. And the one the one I've noticed lately is the oh save the wildlife or whatever and don't rake your leaves. That one I've seen a lot coming now. Don't rake your leaves until after May or Yeah, I saw one about don't don't cut your grass. That one too. The spring. No. And we got to be really careful with that because some folks Well, okay, I'm preaching to the choir, but anyway, yeah, we got to have those conversations on what that is.

Um, if at all possible, you know, maybe we could work with um um Deborah, I think that's her name at the city. Um with just some, you know, here's some concepts and things that we're looking to promote, right? So rather than saying, "Hey, no mo may," you know, here are ways to consider the timing of when you mow based on different activities. So I think there's some education that the city could do generally to homeowners and the way that they maintain their property and interact with their neighbors. Maybe recruiting the conservation district, bring them in and have some of those discussions, too. That would be nice because if I know that, okay, I'm saving the bees and the bees help save my life. If I could connect it, I might do it. But to just tell me don't mow my grass and to I mean I need some education behind it. Thank you. Yeah. Don't And we do want you to mow it at some point. Right. So I don't get wildflower designation. So yeah. So it's real complicated. Yeah. Yeah. We got to boy. But anyway, make it easier and providing information in a more positive way I think goes over better than or full on whenever possible. Agreed. Creative way. All right. And then we have identifying community needs as it pertains to PUDS. This is one I really like. I'd like to see happen. Um, you know, we have several PUDs throughout the city. They're all usually supposed to, you know, incorporate something for the public, whether that's public access by the waterfront or, you know, a community garden or a playground or something like that. If we could identify these uh through the neighborhood associations about what their specific neighborhood's looking for, then we can use that information when we are reviewing PUD requests because basically the idea of a PUD, and I'm just stating this as a reminder, you know, there's a benefit to the developer of being able to consider the entire

site and all of these items as once, you know, it's it's a cost and a time saving to them over time. And so the idea is is that there's an opportunity for a additional benefit to the public as well. You know, it's it's a bit of a give and take. So So these are just a few I came up with today. I'm sure there's more um you may want to consider, especially reviewing the uh progress report. So if you want to bring some ideas for next month, we can vote on them. Because this might get into potentially lengthy discussion. Um, could we maybe suggest that if people have time to review and then have, you know, ideas that are thought out that they can maybe submit them to you in advance that we could put them on a list like this just to keep us on track? Sure. I will send out all this information in the email uh on Monday and um put that as a note. Yeah, great. I can give everybody, you know, if we've had time to come up with ideas and thoughts, we can talk about them just like these with a little more detail, but not get off into the weeds with things that come to us too much. No pun intended. I think that that is really all we have uh in general. So, if we scroll down on our agenda here, I think we probably have any unfinished business. Anybody have unfinished business today? Seeing none. Do we have any I do like that agenda. Thank you. It's somewhere. Any new business? Okay. We do typically have a um public comment period. However, there is no one in the audience. And did you say our Facebook is not working? Facebook is not currently working. Not currently working. So, nobody's going to It could be on YouTube. could be on YouTube. Live on YouTube. Yes. Okay. Well, then we'll give folks an opportunity to call in 231724-6721 and we'll give you a moment to do that.

Anybody calling in? Nobody's calling in. All right. Nobody. I would take a motion to adjurnn. Some moved support. Supported to adjurnn. All those in favor say I. I. All those say no. Stay here. Have a wonderful holiday. Thank you. You too. Merry Christmas, guys. degrees. The D.oint 21 and the relative humidity 66.