Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Mercy Norwalk. Oh, yeah. And she says the same thing. She's like, "Well, half the time there's a kid coming in here. I can already tell you what it is because of what's Is Amy Megan's sister?" No. No. Um, there's the new Jessica. Okay. Dr. Briggs. Okay. We are broadcasting. Just heads up. Um, but I mean it just she's like it just goes round and round and round and call and get medicine for your Well, we had so for the our nine-month-old, we took him to the clinic and they said, "No, he's doing okay." And the next day he had like 114 like we're doing urgent care. Yeah.

And they got him a steroid and but then thankfully our neighbors had ear drops that we could use overnight and then our ET is like, "Yep, I'll call them." But yeah, it's just you said you have so you have nine month old I had it in the box on the left. No, cuz we just did we just went saw this last night. Oh, that's what that's what we did. Yeah. No, we we skipped the primary care and just called right to the ENT and we're like, "Yeah, he's got all the same symptoms." Started his ear started barking and he's like, "Yeah, I'll write you a prescription." So, I love when that happens.

I would to me it was like a shot in the dark. I'm like, "There's no way." And then he called back. He's like, "Yeah, it's fine." Yeah.

Yeah. Fun times. I was laughing with one of my friends like, "Yeah, the Super Bowl used to be like, you know, go out to the bar and have some beers and now I'm watching it on my phone in my child's twinsized bed." Like, times have changed. football recorders.

See the Iowa State Gymnastics canceled their season. And I were talking about all before a lot of injured kids. Oh, I've started hearing like I've heard rumors. Yes, that's what I'm hearing, too.

Did you miss that?

Two of those men. Yeah, it's those are one of those things that if if we were looking we go to a lot more that extra I mean it it's a half hour from here both ways. Yeah, it's adds Luke's got the right idea because he can live up north and get to Iowa State basketball games a lot quicker than I can. Even Elliot's got a shorter many women's games at six on week nights. Sorry. Are there many women's games at six o'clock on week nights? 6:30. Is that your regular earliest? Yeah, they occasionally will be at 6:00, but almost always you be there hour early. Yeah, got that. Yeah.

So, it is 37 minutes from my house to the Hilton parking lot. Well, you probably got a reasonable parking spot, I assume. I have an assigned space that's pretty close to where I enter the building.

Tech is all set. We have uh Brent on the Zoom Right. Welcome everyone to the February 9th planning and zoning um meeting. Um can we have a is 5:45. Can we have a roll call from Elliot Een? Forest

here, here. Samson here, Steer. Thompson here. Okay, I will need a motion and a second to approve tonight's agenda unless there's any changes. Forced motions. Samuel second. Do we need roll call with that or? For i. Anders. I Thompson. fire

and we will do an approval of the minutes of the January 26, 2026 meeting. Everyone can look that over and if there's any changes, please speak. Otherwise, we can make a motion and a second to approve the minutes. Same as a motion for second. I have a roll call, please. Forest. Hi. H Andrews. Hi. Peterson. Hi. Thompson. Hi. I'd like to welcome the guests here in public and on the Zoom.

Um if there's anyone who' like to speak of a topic that is not on tonight's agenda, you can unmute and speak for three minutes. Hearing nothing, we will move on to our agenda item of the consideration and recommendation to city council regarding an amendment to the city of Norwok urban renewal plan. Luke, can you please brief us on this? Yep. Um, is is Holly there as well or

Okay, gotcha. Um, she can uh jump in where she needs to. Um, but essentially this is uh part of our urban renewal plan. When we uh have projects coming up that we're going to do incentives for um or development agreements, we roll them into our urban renewal plan so they can be eligible uh for those things. Um so this would be an amendment to add uh 282 acres um to the urban area once it's finally fully annexed into the city. Um, council did approve an annexation. Um, and that goes to uh the city development board this Wednesday. Um, we don't expect there to be any hang-ups on annexing that area. Dad,

I would just say that he had mentioned when we um will do incentives that this is part of the process, which is true, but it's also um anytime the city wants to generate or utilize TIFF generation from any project, even if it's not for an incentive, if it's just for a city project, we have to do the same process. Correct. Yeah. The development that we're um working on with this particular procedure is um they won't be getting tiff incentives. So, but the city will utilize that that tip generation for infrastructure projects.

Okay. Is there any comments from the commission? Is this land that was originally in the annex area or is this additional land or? Yeah, so it was uh encompassed in that larger annexation originally and with the appeals and things we've got going on with the bigger annexation um we wanted to get this moving forward. So council took action on that um and I think believe back in December and uh yeah so we're moving forward with that process.

Okay. Anyone else? Otherwise, I can entertain a motion to recommend approval to the city council. Force the motion. Samuel sent a second. Please have a roll call. Elliot Fors. Hi. Enders. I Samson. I Thompson. Hi. Recommendation to council is for approval from PNC. All right. I guess next would be city council with Andy.

Lips are moving but I can't hear him. He's unmuted. Hey, come on. Yeah. Can you guys hear me now? Sorry. Yeah, we got you. I don't have any topics, I guess, from city council. Is there another topic for me besides that? Nope. There's any updates for us? Okay. Um, hear nothing. Holly with economic development.

Sure. Um, the 2025 economic development annual report went out in January, so I won't run through all those. I know there's a lot of information in that, but if you didn't receive it and you want it, please let me know. I'll be happy to email it. Just has a lot of good information about businesses, new businesses, jobs, increases in valuations and tax revenues, all that good stuff, current projects, and upcoming developments. Um, but for now, I'll just put a couple of dates in front of you to keep in mind. Uh the agenda item tonight was related to the larger project that we just mentioned that we've been working on for two years. So it's kind of a big big deal for us. So the next step is like Luke mentioned this annexation hearing that we'll have with the state on Wednesday. So hopefully everything goes well there because then the city council public hearing is next Thursday for the urban renewal area amendment followed by the development agreement which will be on March 5th city council meeting. So, if all goes well, this project that's going to generate over 400 million in new value will officially move forward. So, fingers crossed. Uh, next Tuesday at 4M, Representative Finstra, Randy Finstra, um, who's also a candidate for governor, will be here in Norwok. I think he's just going to do kind of a tour of some of the project areas and then be available for some public Q&A discussions. So, we'll send out more details once once we know a little bit more about that location and everything, but next Tuesday at 4 p.m. And then lastly, if anyone's interested, uh the Kosovo Independence Day celebration is next Friday, February 20th at 5:00 p.m. at the World Food Prize Building. So, if you're not um you know familiar with or involved in foreign relations, this is just a really good way to kind of get a taste of that through our sister city partnership and country to country partnership with Kosovo. Um, so just let me know if you'd like to go to it. Happy to send in an RSVP for you. You can bring your spouse or somebody else. Um, it's kind of a neat thing to witness.

It's just a really dignified and kind of business formal event. Involves both our militaries, all of our sister city partners. Um, they really love the US. So their gratitude is just pretty humbling and kind of cool to see. So again, let me know. Happy to send that in. And other than that, just happy to answer any questions. Thanks, Holly. Um, Luke, anything for community development? Uh, not a lot. Just, uh, thanks for chairing tonight, Elizabeth. We, uh, appreciate you stepping in and taking that on tonight. Welcome. Um, Elliot, anything?

Just a real quick thing. Um, at the end of this week, I'm going to St. Lewis for something. And I think I've mentioned to this group a few times about uh New Town St. Charles, which is a traditional neighborhood development that I like to use as a good example of some of the things Luke and I uh promote from a design perspective. And I'm going to try to convince the lady friend to let us uh take a quick detour off of the interstate to go um see it in person. Um, and just I'm hoping to bring back some interesting media for the group. Um, I like this one because it's big and it's also in the region. It has a comparable housing market to De Moine. So, I think it's a reasonable thing to show folks looking to develop here. So, um, with that, I've got nothing else.

Right. Well, our next meeting date is February 23rd at 5:45. Um, I think we're up to adjournment. So, if there's a motion and a second, Samson a motion for second. All right. Um, all in favor say I. I. All right. We're adjourned at 5:54 p.m.