Planning Commission - workshop

All right. Good evening everybody. And welcome to our, uh, comp plan kickoff joint work session. Um, I guess we're not going to do, uh, a roll call. Glenda brought my mints. Thank you. So I've been looking for it for the last, she had them sitting here for me every, every time I go in our office, I'm like, where are the mints at? We haven't had those for a couple of weeks. Um, so we'll call it to order and I'm just going to do a introduction to our, uh, the company who's running the comp plan for us, and they're going to kind of kick us in. Is Ian going to do a little bit of an opening too? I was supposed to say something else. I can't remember now. We're going to go through. So I'm going to have a little bit of a time frame for everything. So I might, if we get a little too heavy winded in certain areas, I might kick it into the next session just because we have a lot of things to cover tonight. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Yeah.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming. So to echo the sentiment, we're going to be kicking off the comp plan tonight. With me here is Graham from Multi Studio. They are the group that's working on the comprehensive plan. I won't take up too much time because time's kind of compressed. But thank you, Graham, for coming. And if you have any questions after, just let me know.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good evening. I'm Graham Smith. I'm with Multistudio. For those of you that have been around the Kansas City area a long time, we used to be Gould Evans. We're an architecture and design firm. We changed name about three years ago, and that's about all it was, was a name change. Same leadership, same Skill sets and everything so but I feel like I have to say that for people that have been around a long time because most people don't know this is multi-studio, but Thank you all for coming tonight. I really appreciate your time and This is exciting start to the kickoff of this I know a lot of you have already done work put in a lot of work on the comprehensive plan And I can assure you that that's not forgotten we're picking that up and hopefully we're Taking it further, taking it across the finish line, but we're also expanding some of the conversations that you all started during that process. So we'll get into a little bit of that tonight in terms of some of the things we're starting to see with our existing conditions that we've been working on. But really wanted to take about the first 20 minutes or so and kind of show you what we've been up to, lay out the project for you, and then spend the rest of our time together just really having a conversation. So I'm going to maybe go through this a little quicker than I normally would but if you have any questions or anything feel free to stop me and we can obviously talk about all this when we get into the conversation like I said when I introduce you to the project and the team give you a bit of a project overview talk about our engagement strategy because I think that's a critical piece to any comp plan is really getting the community involved and then show you where we're at with what we're calling the community profile or that existing conditions piece So MultiStudio is the lead consultant on the team. With us also is Wilson and Company for transportation, looking at utility information and helping us with engagement. And then also Rich Kaplan and Associates, or RCA, and helping us understand the development market better, economic development currently, and as well as the impact from any of the recommendations that we would make during the process or in this plan. I want to start kind of at the very beginning. I think it's helpful to kind of level set everything with the group, and we'll do this probably with the community as well as we restart with them, but really talking about what a comprehensive plan is. You know, the comprehensive plan is your policy document to guide growth, zoning, and development for the long term. It is a, what we call, what we would consider a living document, so it's not intended to be adopted and just be static. We want to make sure that we're giving you a better decision-making tool that allows you to apply strategies and actions that are discussed during the process to public investments as well as private development decisions that the Planning Commission and the Council will be making. And then finally, kind of on what it is, like I said, it's really a decision making tool. It should set the framework. Sometimes we like to say it sets the framework for what you are going to discuss with any given proposal or any given improvement. or change within the community. But it is a city-wide document. So we switch over to what it is not and go to the second one. It is not a solution for every single thing that's going to come before you. But again, it should set that framework for you all to have meaningful discussions about what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad, and how you move the community forward with improvements and changes in development and growth. It is not the zoning code. It is a policy document that should be implemented through the zoning code, first and foremost. The zoning code's gonna get into your development standards and your public improvements so that the plan should give you enough guidance to implement what the community desires and what your vision is through the zoning code and other tools. And then also, jumping down to the last one there, it is not just a plan for City Hall. We know in these times, and most times, limited resources, limited ability to do things, this has to be a community effort. So there will be some very specific things that identify the city as the keeper of those actions and those strategies, but we also want to engage the community in a way that they have ownership in this, and that they can move this forward and take on tasks themselves as neighborhoods, as individuals, as business owners, as property owners.

I'm hitting the wrong button.

Real quickly, our schedule, because we've started with a significant amount of information and things, this is a pretty quick burn. And so over the next probably six months, we're gonna progress through these four tasks. We've basically gotten through the project initiation, and that's really, as we say, setting the project up for success. So we've started to identify our outreach strategy. We've identified an advisory committee, or we're starting to identify that advisory committee. We're starting our engagement and I'll get into a little bit about that Not only are we meeting with you all tonight, but we've other we've got some other online activities already going And so we're really starting to set the framework for the project going forward We're also working on tasks to that exists that community understanding existing conditions Producing that profile document that's going to say okay. Here's a snapshot of Springfield in time for a whole host of things and Transportation and connectivity land use and zoning housing economic development and a whole myriad of things that we're going to look at your current state of the community today. And we're a significant way through that. And we'll be wrapping that up over the next month or so and then once we wrap that up and we. share it with staff first and make sure we've got all the T's crossed and I's dotted. We'll share it out with everybody and probably have another workshop similar to this when that document's prepared. Test three is probably one of the more important tasks in this, and that's really the visioning, taking what we've learned in the last process as well as what we're learning in task two and really sitting down with the community, that includes yourselves, but the broader community as well, and really starting to define a vision for the future. Not only the vision, but also those strategies and policies that you want to, adopt to move the community forward. And so that's really where we start kind of looking. We pivot from looking at what you have now to what you want to be in the future. And that's a super critical and critical step that we're going to spend about three days in the community working with people making sure that we hear people and that we get it right so that we can craft the plan, which is the last part of the task for the comprehensive plan. So we're going to put all of that information together and give you a plan that hopefully you all will adopt. That's the goal. So this is kind of what we've got planned out for you all in terms of your specific engagement. We do have some other requests of you, and I'll get to those in a minute. But like I said, we've planned out a series of these workshops. They can either be individual or they can be joint like this one. But we want to make sure that we're getting your input and your feedback and quite honestly your ownership in this as we move forward as decision makers. One of the things we've already done, for those of you that were involved in the last process and have seen the frameworks that they were using to kind of shape that document, in reviewing that document, we really kind of pulled it apart and when we put it back together, we thought there was an opportunity to really simplify and kind of streamline the key topics that the plan should be discussing for the community. So... The items on the left, the six items on the left, we've narrowed down into four items. Community design, community infrastructure, neighborhoods and housing, and the economy. And you probably can't read the little sub bullets underneath there, but what we're trying to show is that we, have taken everything that was in that framework and carried it over into this new framework. But for simplicity sake, I think the four topics will allow us to be more intentional with some of the things that we're doing with our engagement and ultimately with our recommendations. The one thing that was missing errors or that wasn't missing It was just kind of in a in my and I guess in our team's opinion in an odd spot was There wasn't enough emphasis on neighborhoods and housing and so we really wanted to pull that out as an individual topic And you can see under there. Maybe you can't see under there, but we've got neighborhood design connectivity and housing under that As some subtopics that we want to talk about during the process. I Um, and then obviously how all of these things relate together, uh, relate to one another to create a complete picture going forward for the community. Um, some of the things we've already touched on or that we've already completed or are in process. Um, we have completed our community engagement strategy and I'll share that with you here in a moment. Um, but really trying to look at all of those ways that we can engage the community. who we need to, the groups we need to tap into, the neighborhoods that we need to engage, and just stakeholders that need to be involved in the discussions at some level. And then using a variety of techniques to reach people. Not everybody likes a meeting, not everybody likes online, so we wanna make sure that we're getting out there as much as possible to meet people where they're at and how they wanna be engaged. The project website went active two days ago. So it is up, and I'm happy to say people are using it. I think I have this later, but I'll spoil it now. We've already got 26 responses to a survey that we have out there, so not bad for two days. People are going to it and using what's out there in terms of the questionnaire as well as a mapping exercise that's online now. You may have noticed on the front cover of this slide show, this project also has a brand. Spring Hill, I've already messed up the tagline.

I can't remember what it is.

Shaped my community, thank you Mike. So we branded it so we could be very intentional about using that so people know that when they see that, we're talking about the comprehensive plan and this process. Like I said, the online engagement opportunities, the questionnaire's up, we've already got some good feedback, and there's a mapping exercise as well, and the community profile report, which I mentioned a minute ago, we're really deep into and working on finishing that up over the next few weeks. What's coming up next a week from tonight is a public open house here From four to seven that will be an open house to largely do what we're doing tonight But maybe in a little bit more detail in terms of introducing the project to the community Sharing some of the things that we've already started to find in our community profile document and then really again trying to get feedback from the community on what they value what their priorities are and what they think of the community today, where they wanna see it go in the future. And then as I said, completing the community profile report is another task, and then the visioning, what we're calling a visioning charrette or a visioning workshop coming up in October. Our community engagement approach, really the goals are to engage the community and identify their goals and priorities for the future, gather public input on the existing conditions and infrastructure, future development redevelopment public investment those things that they're interested in seeing either stay the same or change and then develop that shared vision for the future of Spring Hill. And then finally this process really is intended to build ownership of the community. We always find that implementation happens I'll say easier and more rapidly when people are bought into what's in the plan. They may not agree with every word of it but they can at least see the strategy and the way in the path forward for the community. Some of our techniques that we've outlined in our plan, in our engagement plan and have already started to put into use is council and planning commission workshops. Like tonight, we are setting up an advisory committee that will be a cross representation of the community. Multi-day visioning workshop, that'll happen in October. Stakeholder and focus group interviews for folks that we really need to get to that probably won't show up to a public meeting. typically that involves the development community that may be a business owner a property owner that doesn't want to stand up in front of everybody and say hey here's what I'm doing so we feel like that's a better way to get get input from those folks is to go meet them where they're at neighborhood and HOA meetings one of the things we want to do is make sure that we hit all of those meetings and speak specifically about things that are important to those neighborhoods, whether it's geographic in the community and where they lie in the community and what they are adjacent to, or if it's big picture things in the community that they want to talk about. Public workshops, obviously, we're having one next week and we'll continue to do that throughout the process. We've scheduled currently four pop-ups, just showing up to local events and engaging folks right then and there for folks that, again, may not come to a full meeting, but have five minutes to spare and can help us understand what's going on in their lives and what they think about the community. And then our online engagement and social media, which I'll touch on in a minute. Our community engagement really follows our four tasks. So we're really, first thing was to create the plan for engagement, which we've done. The second piece is to build that shared understanding, which is that community profile. So everybody who reads that document will have an understanding of what's going on in Spring Hill today. That's pertinent to the plan as we move forward. And then test three again, one of the more important pieces of creating that community wide vision to move the plan forward from kind of ideas and vision to actions and strategies. And then finally confirm the direction of those policies and strategies as we put the plan together. This is the project website, springhillkscompplan.com. And it is, like I said, it's up and active. It's intended to be kind of a repository and a tracking mechanism for the entire process. So as we complete documents, as we want to engage the community in different exercises, they will be up on the website. Our intention is every public meeting that we have we will duplicate that in as close as we can effort online so that people who can't make the meeting, who don't want to come to the meeting, can also participate online and have their voices heard. The second piece that in addition to the questionnaire that's up there now is an interactive community mapping exercise where people can go on and identify different areas in the community whether it's an whether there's some sort of issue there whether there's some sort of opportunity And leave us comments and things about things that may need to be addressed or may need to be replicated or things like that within the community I talked about the questionnaire. This first questionnaire is really intended to understand what people value. Again, it's going to be very similar to what we're going to do at the public meeting next week and try and get feedback on their understanding of the community today and then what they'd like to see in the future. So how can you guys help us? I think there's probably, there's these three things. One is share your unique expertise. It is, without a question, you guys all come to this process with your own ideas, your own thoughts, your own experiences in Spring Hill. We want to hear those. We also, as this group in particular, we want you all to also recognize the community-wide impact that things have and the community-wide understanding of things. So as you give us your thoughts and ideas, you give us your issues and challenges, we also want to hear about the community-wide elements that have shaped the community to date. So give us your feedback, give us your own unique circumstances, but also help us understand the community as a whole. support in-person engagement, share out things that we're trying to get the word out about, show up to community events when you can, and just basically build awareness of the project, help us build awareness so that we can reach as many people as possible, whether in-person, online, or talking to the community. I did have a few things from our community profile document that we're starting to put together that all kind of run through really quickly. But we've looked at the population distribution and kind of the trends. Spring Hill's very appealing to families. Your largest population is 25 to 44 and under 18. You are an aging population like the rest of the country. You are an aging population. Education and income, you have rising household incomes. Pretty dramatically, actually, in the higher income households of 150,000 or more over the last five years. And you're also a highly educated community. Higher proportion of bachelor's degree than the county, both counties and the state of Kansas. Home values have tripled over the past decade, from about 160 to about $350,000. Higher cost of housing increase, higher cost housing increases, so those housing units that are at the upper end of the cost spectrum are growing, and then moderately priced housing remains steady, so even those middle tier, those moderately affordable, or not big A affordable, but moderately priced homes remain available. Zoning, you are primarily a residential community. You all know that. Most communities are. You do have a significant amount of area dedicated to what we're considering employment, whether that's industrial, some of that mix of commercial slash industrial spaces and things like that, and then a limited amount of commercial at about 7% of your overall land area. And then finally, connectivity. This is kind of something we try and hone in on in particular is how well the community's connected, physically connected, whether that's by automobile, bike, or other things. And really the connectivity, your highest rate of connectivity happens in this part of town, in the older part of town. And then as you move out, it gets a little more disjointed, a little more harder to connect. And so that's something we'll be paying attention to as we move forward. That's a really quick kind of overview and presentation on what we've been up to. And so I think from this point, we'd like to just engage in a conversation about your thoughts and ideas, some of the challenges you all see, some of the opportunities. I don't know, Mayor, if you wanted to say a few words or kick us off. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, Amy already has it. So yeah, we can get that sent out.

I don't have anything in particular. I think for the most part, I don't know if Ian and Mike had anything that they wanted to specific questions for the group. I know my one request was going to be between the two groups of planning commission and city council, we are spread out throughout the city. So if there's an HOA meeting or a neighborhood meeting, wherever you live, I would hope that you could be there. I would say, um, make it a point to be there for those. So, you know, if Dayton Creek's having one, Rachel, I'd want you to be there because... We have one a year. Yeah.

Our developers still enjoy everything.

Yeah, so I think we were... I was talking with... John, off the top of my head. I can't remember. But he's been working with trying to figure out that. So the advisory committee is going to help a little bit with that. But basically, all of these neighborhoods, we're going to try and go through. And then if they're not HOA regulated, we're going to try and break off certain streets. So say South Street to Spring and from Webster to Harrison and say, hey, if you live in this area, we're going to have a meeting at City Hall. try to have at least one person or if not one from each group, one from planning, one from city council. I think for the community to see that they're represented in the different areas throughout town is pretty important because right now it feels like, Oh, these people, I don't, if I don't know them, they're, they're just somebody that doesn't care about me. So I think that'll help a little bit with making sure that we feel engaged and they feel engaged with us between the two groups. So that was my major request for that. So we may be sending something out. I don't know how we're going to manage that, but, we can't have too many people at one because then it becomes, you know, we start to get into, uh, you know, the meeting issues. But outside of that, if we can keep it down to one or two people per group, I think we'll be okay. So that was my, my big ask from everybody is I know we all have stuff going on, but if we can be as involved as we can in this process, that was my big push was I wanted the HOA meetings in the, neighborhood meetings because I feel like there's a big piece of our community that's not going to go on our website. They're not going to go scan the QR code. We're going to try to have paper options. We're going to have online options at those meetings so we can get as much feedback as we can on every subject. Then, like you were saying before, we can really focus on maybe there's something in that particular neighborhood that's really important that down where I live I don't think anything about, and it doesn't matter to me at all, but up there it does because there's something different. Many different things to think about. Outside of that, Ian, do you have any talking points you'd like to go over?

I know Amy did it.

Okay. So not particularly. We have contact information for most, if not all, of the HOA membership. Even the ones that are still developer bandaged, we were able to get a whole contact information from the development company. So we should be able to coordinate that on our end. For those that don't live in an HOA or don't have that kind of setup network, whatever you can kind of do to help us delineate what would work best for you would be great. But as far as the HOA is concerned, we do have that kind of setup. So we're fully on board, though. We think that communicating with the HOAs and neighborhoods is a great idea and something we want to do.

Since we don't have anything formal, what feedback so far, what things do you want to see that you didn't see, or what did you see that you think will be better or different than last time? I know about half of your group was kind of involved in the previous comp plan, but this time we have a lot of new folks on city council and on planning commission.

I like how the categories have been collapsed. I think it will make it kind of easier to follow for people. It makes a lot of sense, and that change alone also makes it feel less boilerplate.

I think that was something we talked about because when you have six, one or two are going to get thrown to the wayside because that's just so many to manage when you're thinking about it.

Can you speak to how much of the work that was done previously is being picked up? 30%, 50%, none? Somewhere between...

None and 30%. I mean, I shouldn't say it that way. Because it's a, there's really a lot of underpinnings of what we're gonna take and expand. So I don't wanna say that we're not picking up any of it, but we're not picking up a ton of it, but I think what came out of that, there's some threads in there that we want to expand on, and I think the frameworks is probably the most important thing that we're taking away, and the way we've changed them, I think, to your point is, and we see that as well, is that it simplifies everything, and I think it allows people to focus more on specific things they want to.

me that you're doing more engagement trying to engage more people than our previous group did and i think that's good and i would look at sort of maybe non-traditional kinds of places to show up i mean for example uh with i know you're going to be at the fall festival right but the day before there's a golf tournament most of the people your business I'll say that I say the cornhole is a was a big attendance last year so that might be one too that we look at yeah and yeah do we have any football games or anything on there

You don't usually see a lot of people.

Now you got me thinking about all the different places.

Engaging with the Chamber of Commerce is going to be a great way for you to find out what's going on in the community. They've got their hands in just about every corner of the goings-on in the city. And in the school district, it's prime sports season right now. And our community shows up big time. So those are great avenues, I think, to reach out and try to get as many people involved as possible.

section that is growing. A lot of those may not get out and about to go to an event or to come up to the hall for a workshop. Is there a way that we can... Do you have an idea?

I can talk to Patty Seitz because I know that she cooks. They get the seniors together I think a couple times a month. I'm not really sure what they call that. Don't we still have lunch here?

We do, but I wouldn't say it's... Wildly attended. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That wouldn't be a bad idea. Yeah. Okay. And that's through the rec.

Okay.

On the last one? I think there were flyers there and then we had those QR codes on the ground everywhere and I don't think those really got used much. Yeah. Yeah Well that may be something that we partner with Some of the groups like Patty Stites and then that kind of work in that area already so That'd be a good good thing to add on Yeah

So do we have like printouts and paper flyers and things like that kind of planned out already?

Yeah. For these first rounds, we've got them planned out. Like for Fall Fest, our intention is to take a hard copy flyer that basically says here's what's going on. It will have a QR code on it as well, but it should also say the next round of meetings that are coming up and things to pay attention for.

Okay, and remind me what the dates are for Fall Festival. Is there a way we could try engaging some of the local service businesses? Like for me, I get about 60, 70 people through my shop every day. It'd be really, really easy for me to put something out and say, hey, grab one of those and take a look at it on your way through. Is that something that we could try to distribute?

Okay.

Yeah, the the survey online I'm sure we can we've what we typically do is print out hard copies of it and leave it We can leave it wherever and just have a return address or a return location on the bottom of it And it's amazing how many people still fill out paper.

Oh, yeah, they perform So like I said, I've got anything with a rating waiting room is a perfect opportunity for somebody to like I've got something I'd love to talk about right now 20 30 minutes it'd be

Well, we have a phone number on there for if there's only a QR code that somebody can call to try to get something mailed to them.

We'll probably have a – I think the website is set up to enter an email address. I don't know about phone numbers, though.

Well, I was thinking if we had a phone number they could call, whether it just be the main office and say, hey, can you mail me the survey because I don't have a computer or I don't have online access, especially for that older community. It might be good for us to have that on there, too.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

What I wondered if we should put it or see if the schools would put it into the kids' backpacks like as a take-home, like you used to get from the rec and stuff before everything was online.

Are we working with the school district on that?

We haven't been in contact with the school district, but I'm sure it's something we can.

There might be something worthwhile doing, too, is getting them to blast out some of that info in the actual newsletters. Yeah. I look less at the emails now than I do at the paper.

Have we posted anything on the Spring Hill page yet? Okay, I missed it.

Let's go ahead and check. See, that's where it's at. Sometimes it just doesn't show up in your email.

It will in five days.

Yeah. I'll see it on the 11th.

Well, and I wonder, too, what rules do we have for putting signs up? Like, First Friday's had those signs that they used to put out. Can we get those type of signs for this, too?

least people see it and think what the heck is that maybe they'll look yeah yeah as long as it's temporary so all the ones got left out after primaries oh yeah we put them on there right

going through the school district. Just because the school district also covers some of that. And I wouldn't want their input in Spring Hill.

Well I think we could also we could also say you know send it to the ones that are in Spring Hill. If it's like Wolf Creek and you know there's going to be some of those are going to Over but those are the areas that are close to us anyway, but yeah do we need people in Stonebridge really chipping in probably not they're far enough away and Well, I'm sure we'll get some of that but is it you know, they're not our immediate neighbors It's that's really the county But, yeah, I think there's a couple different ways, and I think just coming up with a plan and that, I think Ian will probably.

Yeah, if we're doing these hard copies, have we already started identifying drop-off points? Are we just going to leave it solely with City Hall? Like, hey, if you fill this out, you've got to come in. Are we going to set up areas throughout the community to take those and bring those in to try to make it a little bit more accessible for people?

Water bill. Yeah, there's ideas about.

Like Price Chopper?

Yeah, like I said, I'd be more than willing to be a stop for people. I can drop things off at any point throughout the week.

Yeah, I wonder if the business owners would be helpful for that. That'd be good. Those are all good ideas. What else? I was going to say, you look like you had a few questions.

So the demographic study was really interesting. They use Rob Schwartz from RSP. And he comes by every year and does an update. And he's like 98%.

Yeah, we can overlay Metro Green on that. That heat map was prepared basically based on data that we were able to get for Spring Hill to try and acquire that for a regional. That's something I don't know that we could take on right now.

I think it's important in some aspect in a regional connectivity. How do our neighbors impact us? How do we impact them?

Yeah. Mean between Yeah, it's a great point because I think between marks studies and I forget the name of them but I think between all of those studies outside of metro green, but their transportation plan their regional transportation plan their kind of It's not really a land use plan, but it is a development pattern map is more of what it is. Between all those things, I think we could start to overlay those on top of Spring Hill and the surrounding areas and see how that informs it. So it's a good point.

Great. Thanks for being here, too, by the way.

Sure. What was your first question?

It was Rob Dunn.

Oh, yeah, that's something we're going to have to learn about. We're just going to have to dive in and learn more about it and engage KDOT if we need to and that stuff.

Well, I think the hard part, too, is there's always going to be some sort of study out there, and we can't incorporate all of them, but we can do our best to say, depending on what happens with that, these might be the routes we go.

Yeah, just because I think if you asked Allison right now, we probably have...

I was going to say, we probably have four or five different studies going between the railroad, the highway, 223rd Street. I mean, what other ones do we have? We have a connectivity study going, too, don't we?

Well, how serious is K7 this time?

Exactly. They keep doing it over and over.

I know, too, in terms of connectivity, it's one of our biggest barriers.

Yeah. Across, 169.

and their growth pattern so that there's going to be a mesh point at some point between us and the neighboring cities.

That's a good point. I might just dive in and continue on this thread because you said connectivity is one of the biggest issues. What else do we need to know about in terms of major issues that need to be discussed during the process, given more thought, given a framework possibly to... All the NIMBYs. Yeah, southern Johnson County kind of stops at Heritage Park I

although they'd like to, so I think with us updating ours and saying, hey, this is where it's at, it would give them the ability to try to make a plan to help get us there, especially with how far Foxwood is. That's so far north now that as we start to move our way north, we can start to maybe request more of, hey, we can get to here. Can you meet us somewhere in the middle?

Yeah, addressing the NIMBY issue, as it were, I think a more... pointed point to that is making sure that as we go through this process and we start to get that final product out for adoption the justifications for where recommended areas are very very easy to follow being able to communicate that clearly and have us all being able to have access to the same information to share that with the community as projects come and people start to have the issues with it, like being able to be as transparent as possible. So as we look at that, how we get that information out and how we word it, just making sure it's as clear as possible. Yeah, for sure. Because a lot of it is really just people boiling down to either I don't know or I don't understand why the decision was made.

So when we talk about NIMBYs, and it's okay to say everything, but what are the primary issues that you're hearing about?

We need things, but we don't want them to be near our homes. We want restaurants. We want businesses that bring in jobs. We want commercial properties that offset our residential tax burden, but not near me. I don't want to have to keep it small, but we want it to pay for all of the hundreds of millions of dollars in projects that everybody says we need to get done. So it's finding a balance between what can we do to keep our identity, what can we do to be considerate to the people that are going to be living next to these potential projects and these potential sites, but also still trying to advocate for what's best for the city as a whole instead of just these isolated pocket of people that are upset about things.

Well, that's why I think the neighborhood meetings are so important because we can see if it's just that neighbors that are upset about something, how do we meet them in the middle and say, we're trying to understand where you're coming from, but for the city, this is a good move.

Right.

And so I think that, that known too. Now, if we have somebody or people that are against something in for, you know, very particular, that's a whole city issue, right? Absolutely. But if it's, Oh, I just don't want it here because that's where I live. That's where we have to address that a little bit differently and see, you know, we got to make it the best we can, but if it's good for the city, we have to look at it objectively.

Yeah. So I think too, moving forward, what, what, What will Spring Hill look like? Where do we want it to go? What is that in the future? I mean, we're trying to fix it for one to five years. Ten years ago, maybe we should have considered charging stations for cars. So moving forward, what's coming down the pipe that we might need to consider to put into something?

The beauty of that project was that was an independent property owner who chose to provide that to a city and it has done nothing but benefit and I think that's where the disconnect comes a lot with our citizens is The overwhelming majority of people genuinely believe the city has control over these businesses coming in and the reality is my shop Blackhawk all these different development areas they They came from us choosing to take that risk on this neighborhood, on the city, and that's not a thing that the city makes happen. If there's not people willing to make those investments and take those risks, it's not going to happen.

They were also saving their post office. There was a drive behind that. Absolutely. It's a very good point. What does it look like?

Well, that's where sometimes it could be. Don't ask me.

You've got to tell me if you've got a drive or not.

Well, that's where it does the investment from us. So our sewer system, that's a huge thing. People are like, this is crazy. But at the end of the day, if we don't have it and the lines that we're putting in, I mean, Mike can tell you the activity that's coming in now from having those going in is tenfold of what it was five years ago. And so we're going to be seeing all different kinds of options that might be wanting to come here. And that gives us more options rather than it's not a great project, but we really need to get something. So we're going to take this, even though we don't love it. The more opportunity we can bring ourselves, the more picky we can be and the more guidelines we can put on them to say it needs to look this way and feel this way and have these things.

Looking and feeling this way, maybe we need to...

Well, and I think that's one thing Mike was talking about. There's some good options that we can do to set, not necessarily guidelines, but some really good recommendations that we can put out there that gives us some teeth in the game a little bit later on when developers come and say, hey, these were the... kind of the recommendations we have in the comp plan. So we'd like you to stick to those. And it's a lot easier if you stick to these rather than not. So I don't, he said it probably better than I did, or I do, but.

Yeah. Mike, what were you saying about it? Yeah.

a good time to look at updating our development code and our development standards

So just as kind of like a real world scenario here, like say with our design standards, like we have, we want facades to look a specific way. If we were able to say in the comp plan that currently for the next two to three years, we plan on not addressing this, but at 2020, or what would it be, 2031, 32, we plan to, set a specific standard in regards to that. Would that be something that we could utilize to maybe encourage developers to come in earlier before those new design standards are now in our comp plan as far as setting that out?

I think we could work on the language itself. We don't want to do what the last comp plan did. We turned it into design standards. It's really more forceful because that's not part of it.

Of course.

But we can say... Facades are encouraged to provide visual appeal, a variety of materials, things of that nature. And then while we're working on updating our development code standards that should be about a year maybe, we can say when developments come in, it's hey, we just adopted a comp plan. And following these guidelines, well I think at least in my time with the city is that there's been a lot of we've always done it this way and so we're gonna continue to do it this way

And I think this is going to give us the ability to kind of break away from that and say, we finally got a really in depth comp plan. We've got new standards and we're going to break away from what the norm has been for the last 20, 40 years because it's kind of been that long for things changing. And so whether that be, we have more, you know, stringent guidelines on what the front needs to look like and it's not fully garage door or it's, you know, it's, you know, when it is going to be multifamily, but when we want it to look more like a single family home rather than be, row housing, you know, there's different things that we can put in for design that I think is would be beneficial going forward. And then when it comes to commercial, it's, it can't just be a steel building. It's gotta be like, you'll look at a lathe on the next. So you have, they'll have a nice front, but then yeah, the backs will still be a little bit more cost effective to build. So things like that.

could be in addition to. But I do think Years back They brought in new streetscapes of what Webster could look like and the city park and

So when you think of Paola, everybody identifies Park Square. They've got that gazebo and the fountain. Well, that was one of the things that they suggested was create a entryway to the park that identifies this as the park or redo the gazebo up there somehow where there's something coming in off of the street. But that's the focal point. And one of them on Webster Street was hanging baskets and flowers and the streetlights, the black streetlights. So those were things prior that we had talked about that actually gives an identity. When you think of Spring Hill, I think of, and everybody right now at this point, it's just the whole community feeling and you can't touch your neighbor.

I was gonna say, to Mike's point, A lot of that, what you're talking about, is probably in the code to really give it teeth and require people to develop that way. But I think the comp plan can set the intent and the character and the quality that is an expectation. Whatever that becomes, whatever that is at the end of this process, I think the comp plan should be able to do that really well. And that is something that as your staff can sit there in front of a developer, sit there in front of a neighborhood and say, these are our expectations. And then hopefully update the code not too far down the road so you've really got the teeth to say, no, this is what we require.

I think the hope is that this will give us the roadmap to get those codes updated.

to where we want them to be. You have to have the vision before you can go into practical application.

And towards the end of the process, once we have a good established direction and the things that the comp plan wants to talk about, we're going to do an evaluation of your current code and kind of identify, kind of high level, but we're still going to identify the things that we think to implement your new code you're going to need to focus on.

All right, that's 6.55. I'm going to give you all a few minutes before your meeting starts. Thanks, everybody. And like I said, we're going to be implementing more, so you'll probably see some communication about when these meetings are, and if you could raise your hand and say I can be there for those type of things. I would like to have, like I said, one governing body, one planning commission at those neighborhood meetings as much as we can. Okay? All right. We'll adjourn. Thank you.

It's 7 o'clock. If everybody will take their seats, we will start the Planning Commission meeting. A trail, it was a walking trail, not a sidewalk, because you had to do certain things to come to a sidewalk.

Okay, I think we're done.

Yeah, I know chapter one. Is there a chair? Is there an extra chair down there? Zero talk.

Yeah, I have an either. Well, thank you. Appreciate it.

No, there's not.

There's not? Okay, I'll turn it over to you. No? Yeah, I'll turn it over to you. Thanks. Well, I think they moved us all around. Yeah, they just. Yeah, Chuck has switched since I was here last. And gave a gavel. Good bet.

All right, I'd like to call the September 3rd, 2026 meeting of the Planning Commission to order. And the first item is the Pledge of Allegiance. So let's stand and say the pledge. All right. Roll call.

Mr. Nace? Here. Mr. Earhart?

Here.

Ms. Jones? Here. Mr. Arevalo? Here. Ms. Bergmeier? Here. Mr. Sly?

Here.

Ms. Squire? Here. Mr. Morse?

Here.

Chairman, we have a full house.

All right. It's been a while since we've had a full house. All right, I will accept a motion to approve the agenda as published.

Second.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. The motion carries unanimously. All right, next item is citizen participation. So this is the... Nobody signed up, okay. This is the section in our regular agenda where if anyone in the public wants to speak about something that is maybe not on, not during the public hearing session, but something else on the agenda, you can come up to the podium and state your name and address. But no one signed up. Anybody want to talk? All right. Seeing none then, we will move on to the formal commission action. Second all right, we have a motion to approve the minutes is published and a second All agree signify by saying aye aye aye all opposed All right the motion carries unanimously Okay next up we have a public hearing on To hear proposed amendments to the Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals provisions.

So we'll open the public hearing and Staff have a report about this Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, there was a staff report in your packet What is being proposed tonight with the actual action for you all to consider is a pretty straightforward thing, which is just removing a from Chapter 17, your zoning code, and removing from your subdivision regs all the provisions that govern the Planning Commission and the BZA. So there's a few things that have all kind of come together. This has been a long-running conversation between staff, between the current council, between the prior council of everything's in a different spot. Chapter 1 has every other board and commission in the city, and your zoning code in Chapter 17 has One, and then your subdivision regs have another. So part of this is just an administrative cleanup. We'd like everything to be in one chapter. And it makes sense to put all the boards and commissions together. The other change is every three years, we get a request to do a BZA hearing. They are few and far between. Probably 20 years ago, there were a lot of BZA hearings. Not so much anymore. And at the rate they're being requested, it's almost exactly enough time for everyone who's been appointed to roll off. And it doesn't make sense for staff every year to be bringing to planning or to bring to City Council Let's reappoint BZA members who might never have to do a hearing but the other side of that is and then we get a BZA request and we realize there's not a quorum and we have to frantically try to set one up so One proposal will be for the City Council to merge Planning Commission and BZA and We will do trainings to make sure planning commissioners kind of understand the concept. In the past, when I've done legal trainings, I've included BCA provisions anyway, just so you all kind of are aware. They very often go hand in hand. Um, the way it would work, and this is how most other cities on the Kansas side of the Metro do this is when there's a BZA hearing, it's the same night as a planning commission meeting. You open the BZA at seven o'clock. Those typically take 15 to 20 minutes. And then the planning commission starts right after that, maybe a five minute break. So it just consolidates things. It reduces the amount of administrative work to make sure that we have a fully staffed BCA and a fully staffed planning commission. It reduces jockeying for, well, I want to be on planning commission and not BZA or occasionally vice versa. So that's just a cleanup idea. The other one is just some general proposed regulations. What was in your packet as what is going to be proposed to council is exactly that. It's a staff proposal. I anticipate the governing body will have some request to change, might send it back to staff to kind of reconsider and amend But that was the first run based on the last. I mean, this is a conversation I started having probably a month after I took over for Chuck. So however many years that's been, that's just sort of been my sticky notes that I had a pile of time to do all these at once. And we decided to kind of take this forward and do all of them at once. The formal action you all need to take is to vote, to amend the zoning regs, to take these provisions completely out. And once they're out, it will be up to the governing body to, create the new section, Article 9, within Chapter 1, and then they will be responsible for keeping that up going forward. That also allows us to continue changing that in a more streamlined fashion. Right now, if we need to change the policies on the Planning Commission, we have to do this every single time. And while public hearing is not in and of itself a problem and not really a slow thing, getting it published 20 days in advance is just a lot of staff work to keep that up. And if, you know... A bunch happens, we drop the ball, now we're a month behind on getting it for you all. So the goal of this is just to modernize our code, get it all in one place, kind of fall in line with what other cities are doing, especially as Spring Hill grows. So, but yeah, here for any questions. Again, as far as specific questions for what's being proposed, happy to listen to them. Your vote is just to remove it from Chapter 17 rather than what the actual wording of Chapter 1 will be. but I'm sure the city council and governing body is open to comments and putting them in the record here can't hurt. I just don't want you guys to get too bogged down on the specifics of what might go into chapter one, because like I said, I was late here cause I was talking to the mayor about the fact that he hasn't read it through all the way. Cause this is just kind of our off the cuff staff proposal. So with that, I'll turn it over for the rest of the public hearing, public comment, and then I can come back up and answer questions.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lau. And I failed to ask the members of the Planning Commission to disclose any ex parte context or conflicts of interest with this, but...

I agree. I don't know that that's possible.

Okay. All right, there are none. So we can continue. Any clarifications of Mr. Lau before we close the public hearing and we can continue any discussion that's needed among ourselves?

Maybe a few clarifications, I think, or just a few questions. Like, the way the code, should we bring up, like, I know this is just to move that, Spencer, from that one section, but should we bring up, like, any, like, recommended potential fixes to the way the wording is for the Planning Commission and the Board of Zoning?

Yeah, so if there's just, like, hey, Spencer, you didn't type that out well, That's an easy fix and it will not be the first time that I have typed I have surprisingly fat fingers sometimes but if there are things for for example one of the other major proposals that I didn't mention earlier was the membership composition so it'll still be nine members rather than having one Johnson County one Miami County it would be up to two county residents so if that's something you want to discuss pro against that's the type of thing we can we can talk about and forward that on to the City Council for their consideration and that's still within so many miles Yes. So we would still want to do a mileage thing. So someone who maybe lives nine miles south or whatever.

And the reason is because we haven't had a full board in a long time. It's good to have a full board because some people are gone. And then you have a quorum. You just need five. Right. And so I see the need to have a lot more commissioners on here. If you can't fill Miami or Johnson, it would be nice to have the representation of each.

historically it's been hard especially the Johnson County side as Olathe and Spring Hill and Overland Park all kind of grow into each other and you heard the mayor talk earlier about mesh points between the cities we're looking at a point where there might be in five to ten years not that many Johnson County residents that aren't in either city and that are also interested in serving on this board so it's sort of a forward-thinking if Mr. Morse ever changes his mind I might annex in

And this is just another clarity along the lines of the Board of Zoning Appeals. So the way I read it, well, the code, it can be changed. But it's like, I don't think Chuck could be there. It's just city.

Yeah, so what we don't want is a county member to feel like they have to be on the BZA. Because the BZA is a very specific, governed by state statute. And we want that to be members of the city. Because a BZA won't be considering variances outside the city boundaries. The Planning Commission almost never does and anymore will not. That said, the city does not feel like at this time they want to completely move away from non-resident members of the Planning Commission. But because the BZA is so hyper-focused on variances, and those are very narrow and very particular, we decided to make that. The pros would be city-only residents. So the county residents could come late or just come watch and hang out and play on their phones in the back.

So the chair will have to hang out in the hall for... 15 minutes, right?

Well, at BCA, don't you elect your chair that way?

Yes, yes. That's the way it usually goes, unless there's multiple in one year. I mean, you elect somebody for a year, and if there's two hearings that year, that carries over.

So we'd have a different chair and vice chair.

So, Cindy, when we sat on the last one, what was the last time there was a meeting before? It was three years ago. Exactly.

I think, was there one earlier this year? Last year? Earlier this year? And before that, I think it was 2023. They're few and far between.

Right. A long time ago, before you were even here, it used to be ex-Planning Commission members because they knew something about rezoning, so they used to volunteer and do it.

There are a lot of overlapping knowledge bases for BZA and Planning Commission. It makes a lot of sense to have people kind of do that double duty rather than working through our zoning code and intricacies with two different bodies. Yeah.

Most of them that I remember was always the garage is going to impede on six inches of somebody else's property or we're vacating an alleyway.

Right.

It's not anything earth shattering.

No. And variances, the qualifications. So when you guys think of a rezoning, there's the golden factors, which we talk about, and that's from the Kansas Supreme Court. And those are sort of guideposts, but they're not requirements. With a variance, there is a state statute that says these are the five things. You have to have them all. they're very hard to meet so there's not a lot of BZA requests because it's a really exacting standard and most people realize that we're not going to hand out a variance because you want a three-story house probably not going to be you know permitted there so so you would have bylaws and once the City Council has moved this Amy and I have already talked about, we'll come back and bring you guys the bylaws to change. We talked about bringing you a new set of bylaws tonight. I'm a very, maybe it's superstitious person, but I don't want to put the cart before the horse and start talking about new bylaws before the governing body has changed how the setup is. And we don't want to change bylaws, and maybe the governing body says, this is a silly idea, Spencer. Maybe we're glad you're moving on, and then we have to go change your bylaws back to the way they were.

So just pointing out the removal of the members and the guideline of three consecutive or five in a year has been overlooked for a number of times. So if that got changed when you brought back the bylaws, then do you just go back in automatically and change that in this document? Or is that something that has to come back to city council for a vote?

The bylaws don't go to city council for a vote. Yeah, this. The city council, whenever they want to change whatever guidelines are for you all, it would be in chapter one. They would be responsible for doing that. It would not need to be a public hearing, publicly noticed, come through you all. It would just be the same as if they want to change the parks board.

I'm just thinking of that one in particular because it is. Yeah.

Right. To the extent your bylaws conflict with city code, the city code will always prevail.

Yeah.

So that will be the safe harbor. But our plan is bylaws, assuming the city council approves elects to take this step and creates new language in chapter one, your next meeting will be revisiting the bylaws to make sure that they don't conflict with city code and any other modifications that you all see fit.

But then does that go to city council to vote on to change it or can Mike and Ian just go in or Amy go in and change it since the bylaws were voted on here?

Your bylaws will never go to city council, right? I think I'm missing what you're asking is going to city council.

I don't remember what letter it was.

It's I. I.

So if we changed our bylaws next meeting, and it was no longer three consecutive or five in a year, we changed bylaws, then does that change? How does that change happen in this document tonight?

It won't.

Well, that we're removing. We're removing all of that. I understand. But then they're creating the new one.

Yes.

So they would have our – say we're two months out on the bylaws. They would have this information here that's now in the new Chapter 1.

Yes.

Does that change from our bylaws go to city council to vote on to change this, or can staff just go in and change it since it was a vote here?

You guys aren't making any recommendation for what's gonna be in chapter one That's not because that's not part of the zoning code so what's in your packet as a proposed language You can say we don't like this and the governing body can say that's fine We don't care or you can say we're not gonna vote to remove this from chapter 17 if you're gonna do this verbatim and And they can still override that vote if they wanted to, just like they could a rezoning request.

I think I'm totally, and I'm going to jump in here. I think I'm totally on board with exactly what you're doing, moving it and cleaning it up. I just don't agree with the language in the eye, especially the members of the planning commission serve at the pleasure of the city council and can be removed for any reason by the city council deems fit. So if they don't agree with my vote, they could remove me. That should be taken out. I don't think there's a lot of cities. I think Overland Park does it. I don't want to get bogged too down on this, but I definitely disagree with that. And I have a motion to maybe change that. But like you said, the city council and the mayor is going to decide on it.

Any changes but what ends up in chapter one is going to be a separate question from always removing it from chapter 17 That said if you want to pass on a message to the governing body Yeah, this is a time to voice that and we'll make sure our staff report to the governing body. I'll point out in the ARS Yeah, that's why I'm bringing it. Hey, they don't they don't like I that's why I'm bringing it. Yep.

Good. The other thing I don't agree with is The second or part e let's see No, wait, sorry, it's still I where it says you're automatically, you resign if you miss three consecutive or five within a 12-month period. I definitely don't agree with that for various reasons, but I think there's a way to kind of come and meet in the middle where maybe there's a, so I have a motion. So what I'm thinking of is just recommending you know, something where if they're absent, you know, three consecutive or five within a 12-month period, then, you know, changing that from, you know, does not constitute an automatic resignation or automatic removal from the office. And I'll give you reasons why. Upon reaching, let me see here. I've got some notes here. Okay, say upon reaching that attendance threshold, this is my suggestion. The mayor and city council shall review the specific circumstances and reasons for the members' absences at the next regular scheduled meeting of the governing body or as soon as thereafter, you know, practical. The planning commission members shall be provided a reasonable opportunity to explain the circumstances around the absences. In determining whether the absences are justified, the governing body may consider, you know, all these things, illness, emergency, bereavement, military duty, severe weather, travel disruption, or other circumstances. And then following the review, the governing body determines that that member has not provided sufficient justification for absences. And that removal is warranted. The member may be removed from the planning commission by action of the governing body in accordance with the applicable law. And I'll tell you why I don't agree with the three automatic. Because I could have easily been removed or had to resign if certain things happen this, so July I was, just to give you an example, July I was on vacation out of the country. I couldn't, we didn't have a meeting anyway. But that was one. Number two, in August my daughter was in the Junior Olympics so I couldn't make it. I was actually in Des Moines watching her during the thing and I could have potentially missed this because it's vacation time during Labor Day. I could have missed this one. I'm just giving you an example. I don't agree with automatic removal. And I know they could probably reinstate you quickly, but I just don't agree with the automatic removal from. And so that's why I'm stating that. And I'm not going to go on and on about it, but that's kind of my recommendation. And I don't mind making a motion for that wording.

I think whatever we do, we need to make sure it has teeth that the mayor is comfortable with, because that changes every four years, or could. And historically, this has been in there and they have chosen to ignore it and not remove them even when all of us were ready for removal. So whatever it is, that would be my comment that we make sure that it is agreeable I did it again.

Yeah, they didn't have any wording to remove us before, right?

Yeah, no, they did.

Well, it's in your bylaws, but it's not in city code. It puts the city council in a tricky spot because the code does not authorize them to remove you for any reason.

Right.

And relying on the bylaws is... Right, that's up to us.

Well, that's, yeah.

You know, and candidly, I don't think that you all have the authority to expel each other. So that's what this is aimed at doing is if anyone has the authority to remove, it's the same authority that appointed you, the governing body.

And what we had just done was send a message. Just so you're aware.

So this is new code, just to be clear.

Joan Smith has been absent for six months in a row. Just so they're aware.

Right, but this way they can actually remove somebody who's not showing up and not resigning. It's like office space. Are you coming to work? No. Are you going to quit your job? No. So we can't fire you. So it's the same thing. Here they can get rid of them, but I don't agree with the automatic three resignation or five within a year.

And so you all know I'm typing long notes. I'm not just sitting here updating my Facebook. So I'm going to present these notes as part of our staff report to governing bodies. So you can make a contingent motion if you'd like. This, your messages will be passed along and they'll be in the minutes of this and they can go back and watch it to hear your tone if they'd like to.

My suggestion is that we communicate our ideas, you know, separate from the motion and we focus our motion on our purview, which is really the fact that This is in the UZO today, which is under our purview, and it's being moved to Chapter 1, which is the City Council's governing body's domain. I think we should focus our motion on that, but let's document what our suggestions are, because Mr. Lau is taking notes, so let's document what our ideas are. Um, and I will share that, that I did get a chance to talk to Mary Young briefly about this and he shared an idea. So he told me Spencer what he told you, which is he really hadn't had a chance to read this report yet. Um, and he kind of made a off the cuff suggestion, which I thought was kind of interesting, which is if someone were automatically resigned due to in attendance, he had an idea that maybe, maybe they will include a, uh, an appeal. So allow the member of the planning commission, um, within 10 days to express their desire to remain on the planning commission and the city council would vote to leave them on at the next meeting. But I think the intent of this is that there's been a history here and there of folks who haven't shown up and haven't resigned. And the goal I think of the governing body is to make sure that the members of the planning commission are people who want to be on it and are engaged in participating. And I think more recently, there's been more people who want to participate. And so it's like, well, let's allow them a chance.

Yeah, and I don't mind if there's an appeal written down, but there's no appeal process at all.

Right, right.

I will tell you one thing the mayor talked about also is finding a way, and I think they will probably suggest a way to delineate an excused versus an unexcused absence. That's the way all the other boards work, too. Right. And if the code says three unexcused absences, I think that probably solidifies a lot. If you all miss three without telling Amy, I'm going to be gone and here's why, same reason you can't just not show up to school for no reason. So I imagine that's where it'll end up based on my 30-second conversation with the mayor earlier tonight.

Let me follow up with that. The council can do a Zoom or a call-in Does that apply here as well? I think that's in there, yeah.

It is. Yeah, I've done it.

I missed that. Then you're not missed. But see, that's perfect. Excused versus unexcused is nice. But the appeal process is fine, too. At least you can say, hey, look, I missed because of this. But it's not written down in here. So I definitely do not agree with that. I also don't agree with them getting rid of anybody for any reason at any time. Why even have a three-year term?

I will say the reason there isn't a good explanation is I sat down and started writing out what does removal for cause look like. And candidly, it's pretty hard to come up with a removal for cause that doesn't fall either it's impossible to remove you or the governing body is just going to say, seems like cause to me. You know, what's the office quote? It's because I hate it. I mean, they could just kind of decide, like, we either set the bar too low or too high, and it's hard to find that middle ground on cause for removal from this body. If it's an employment contract, it's different, right? But for here, where they're deciding what causes. So I will encourage them to think about that. I'll pass that along of, you know, do you want a blanket removal? Maybe they're uncomfortable with that.

Right, yeah.

They might be. Remove the blank. I think most of the people here would be happy to remove the blanket removal and maybe,

Well, I would hope that, to me, the most egregious statement is the first sentence, that I can be removed for any reason. I mean, I think that politicizes the whole status of this body. I mean, so I can't say anything controversial or some board member wants something passed and I vote no. Right. And next month, I'm gone.

I think the only backstop to that is I assume it would require a majority of the governing body.

I think they would be OK with that. They'll have a majority.

If the mayor wants you out, you're going to be. Well, and most of the cities, and I did some research, of course. And so most of the cities, like Overland Park and Manhattan are the only two cities I know around here that kind of have that, you can get rid of you for any reason at any time. Gardner doesn't. Olathe doesn't. I mean, all these cities in Kansas do not. So I don't want to start that. I don't think it's a good precedent to where if a new commissioner is appointed and they're like, oh, well, they can get rid of me depending on how I vote. How should I vote? So I don't want them to think that ahead and to Rodolfo's point. So I think it's fine to do everything here and just tell them this is what we like. That taken out, in my opinion, and please jump in here. and then maybe change it to maybe excused. Three unexcused absences or something.

Yeah, I think that appeals a good way. Because then you can go in and plead your case, hey, I had this, a kid, work, travel, whatever. Especially when we're not compensated to be here, there are things that come up in life that keep us from being here.

Right. Appeals are fine, too. Just to have a way to maybe unexcused versus excused might be easier, but that might be harder to track.

Yeah. My sense is the intent of this is not to... necessarily politicize the planning commission or run people off. It's based on past experience of having folks who held onto a seat and literally there was no way to remove them until their term expired. And so there was an empty seat for a year or two.

It's happened a couple times.

For Cindy, that's why we put it in the bylaw.

Right, exactly. And then you're still at the mayor's mercy because that's what happened. The mayor was not of the mind that we were going to get rid of him. It was okay that they'd missed 10 meetings.

Right.

Okay. Their term will be up soon.

Right. And the other advantage of this approach is that it doesn't put the burden, even if legally it was okay, but it doesn't put the burden on the Planning Commission to use the bylaws to remove a member by name. Right. Instead, it allows someone to just resign with dignity without even trying, just by nature of them not participating and not appealing. Right. So they're never actually called out.

So, Chuck, I'm totally okay with either we have, take that first line out, and then we have excused versus unexcused, or, which might be difficult, or we have an appeal process where they just say, you missed three, you're out. You missed five, you're out. You have to have some kind of wording in there because then there's just no way to even explain why was I gone. What if I was in a car wreck? coming here, that would have been three strikes, you're out. So it's, I think that's, I think we've talked about it enough. I don't want to waste too much time on it, but.

The agenda's light. We've got time.

Spencer will take those notes back.

All right.

I said Spencer will take the notes back and they'll come up. Yeah, yeah.

That's all I want to do is express my opinion on that.

And as the sole county representative on the planning commission, I feel I should speak up to that part. Um, which, which, so historically, you know, I've always thought that, you know, that the planning commission composition, including one Miami County and one Johnson County representative, I thought, you know, that was very forward looking because, you know, all the annexations we do all the time are in the growth areas around the city. And, and so, you know, I always, I always thought it was intentionally done so that you had representation of folks who were in the growth area, within three miles of the city limit who are going to be impacted by the city's growth. But it turns out the reality is something different that Spencer explained to us last time, which it has more to do with the cities technically have the ability to force their zoning onto fringe areas even before they're annexed, kind of as a way of forcing annexation. And that's not something that Spring Hill has historically done, and it's not something the city plans to do. And then you combine that with the fact that the Miami County seat has been vacant for quite a while now. And the way it's worded today, you can't backfill it with anyone but a Miami County resident. I totally understand that. And, and I like the compromise of is, is the way it's written now, which is, you know, the, the, the last two seats or those two seats can be filled by county resident or city. And, you know, it, so if you, if you get someone who's qualified and hasn't antagonized the governing body who lives in the county, Maybe they have a chance of getting appointed. Otherwise, you've got a lot of people from the city who want to participate. And so then logically, it's like, well, we can't find someone from Miami County, so let's get a qualified city candidate on there.

And back up to not only is that the law, but there was also interlocal agreement. There was an agreement between the city of Spring Hill and Johnson County Commissioners and the Miami County Commissioners that they would have one resident. And at that time, the big one was on the Miami County side, there was a business that the county commissioners didn't want to deal with anymore, but it impacted the city greatly. So they entered into this agreement that allowed the city to do the visits on that business, on that one in particular at the time.

But there was... Yeah, now in 2026 extrajudicial zoning is very rare in the state and it's also a burden on our staff to be going out there and Following up on a CEP every year for someone who's not in the city boundaries We have plenty of those within the city to work through so we're you know using Staff paid by taxpayer dollars to go check up on businesses that maybe aren't necessarily contributing much to the tax base So I you know, it's also a general policy thing that the governing bodies expressed a couple times the past few years which is We don't have any plans on enforcing extrajudicial zoning, so we don't really need that provision in our planning commission anymore. But there's still a desire to have voices, maybe just like Chuck. Yeah, he's going to be here forever.

I don't know, but I appreciate that. And at the end of the day, we all serve at the pleasure, if you will, of the mayor and the governing body.

And that's a good point. We do serve for that.

Mm-hmm.

The mayor nominates us, and then the city council and governor body approves the nomination.

Which is good if we can change the bylaws to the point now, because Chad's not going to be the mayor forever, so the next person stepping in, we get it to where it should be, then they still got to follow suit, and it can't just be, oh, you're gone, you're gone, you're gone, because I don't want you. But before your term runs out, then it's different. Right.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Now, how do you suggest, I'm just going to throw some questions out there. I don't want to.

problems or anything but I do want them to know that I don't we don't well hopefully most of you don't agree with the code is written and nothing against you but no no look I I have no pride of authorship on this this is like I said a series of meetings over the past few years that I kind of had just kept in a notebook and I threw them all together into this I would anticipate before we put this on the governing body agenda I'll probably put my head back together with staff and with the mayor and say, hey, here's the comments they had. Do we want to just make changes now before we bring it to governing body? Do we want to highlight those and have the governing body decide it live? That is not my call. But your comments will be passed along either in the form of changing what we give the governing body or in the agenda review sheet, I will list out the comments from planning commission included the following revisions to this proposal.

And I also compared it to other boards here, like the Board of Zoning Appeals, which will be us, But you have to be removal for cause upon written charges. Cemetery board, removal for misconduct or neglect of duty. Parks and Advisory Board, no express member removal standard found. Public Billing Commission, no express removal standard. So all the others aren't consistent with what you see. That's why I have issues with it, too. It doesn't match other boards in the city.

Yeah. And it makes sense that the governing body goes through with this to go back through and modernize. There's a lot of changes to Chapter 1 that Glenda and I have talked through and need to kind of bring forward. So it's a good point, too, if we should probably standardize the appointment and or removal process across boards. Right, right.

I think it could just take out planning commission in any city board. That way it incorporates current boards or any future boards.

So my question, though.

Steve, you think someone's come after you? Your question is what the motion should look like? Yes.

Steve, I don't think we have to make a motion.

Well, you need to make a motion because you're amending the zoning code to remove it.

He's wanting a motion for aye.

Right. You don't need to include that in the motion. I promise you this will be passed along.

We're just moving it, so I don't need to include it.

Yeah, because the contingency on you can only remove it if Chapter 1 reads XYZ.

Okay.

No, I'm totally with that.

I just want them to be aware of the concerns and the inconsistencies. Okay. I promise they will be forwarding your comments.

If not, you guys can fire me.

And please reiterate the value of county representation. I humbly ask. Yeah. Um, all right. Okay. Any other questions for Curtis? We've kind of deliberated during the public hearing, but no more questions. Um, should I see if there's any public comments? Okay. So this is a public hearing. So if any members of the public would like to address this item, I'll be impressed and surprised. Oh, maybe one. Okay, when you come up, please state your name and your address. And then Amy will set the timer for five minutes or... Okay.

Hi, everyone. I'm Tara Combs. I live at 15320 West 193rd Terrace. I am out in the county. So I guess my question is, does that mean that there can be no county residents if it can be filled by a city?

person up to two.

Yeah, up to two. But I thought I heard that if that wasn't filled, that it could be filled by someone who lives within the city. Does that count for both of those seats? Yes. One. So you have potentially no county residents is what I'm hearing.

That's correct. That's true.

Make sure I heard that right. I think that's kind of a concern, especially if, you know, you can still go within that three mile radius. and we have no representation at all. That's really concerning for me.

Yeah, I agree. I live in the, this isn't Q&A, but I'd answer you.

Really quick before you answer, do you have any other public comments in your five minutes before he jumps in and eats up too much of your time?

You know, I was considering what you guys were talking about. with the bylaws and making sure that what happens is good for everyone because it all directly affects everyone who lives in and around Spring Hill. So I know we've been up here multiple times, but please just consider us. That's really where I'm at. I'll keep showing up and I'll keep saying the same thing because it directly affects me, my family, the people that live around us, so it's important Thank you.

Thanks. Thank you Just some comments Which is you know, so I'm today the only County representative on the Planning Commission and As it used to be structured the city was required to have one Johnson County one Miami County representative and so this change will make those last two seats and county or city, and it really has to do with two things. One is the lack of participation from the Miami County side of not being able to find qualified candidates who wanted to serve on the planning commission. But the other one is really the history of why there were county seats on the planning commission composition to begin with, which had to do with city's ability to exercise extrajudicial zoning onto county residents, which I think in reality was kind of a heinous way of forcing you to annex in. But it's not something Spring Hill has ever done, and it's not something the city plans to do. As I said earlier, I always viewed the county seats as something positive, obviously, because those of us who are in the unincorporated areas around Spring Hill are in the growth areas of the city. and we are impacted by what the city does. And the decisions that the city makes, especially as the city annexes land around us, it can affect our quality of life and our property values. But to your point about having representation I agree. I mean, it's tough because you know, our our only representation really is the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners Until we're in a city. And so, you know, we really well we can still show up here and and Make our voices heard and and try to appeal and influence to the best of our ability But you know at the end of the day until we're in the city, you know, we don't pay city taxes and so we're We really technically don't have a seat at the table, which is just the way that it is, unfortunately. More citizen participation. All right, we have one more caller.

John Waterman, 21110 West 186 Terrace. Good evening. I just wanted to add one comment, I guess, there, and that may be that for county representation, if there is a county representative, then that would get precedence, potentially over the city participants as those last two seats. However, that language could be introduced to to have that representation if it is available before, you know, being, before having citizen or city, a city, a city resident fill that seat. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thanks. Did you state your name and address, John? I did. Thanks.

Yeah, 21110. West 186th Terrace. Yep.

All right. Thank you. Yep. So, Spencer, I would love that to be added to the notes, actually, just as an idea, which is, you know, if weight or just extra consideration for qualified county residents who would like to serve.

Give merit.

Yeah. That'd be great. All right, so we will, if there are no other formal questions of staff, I'll close the public hearing. Anyone? Okay. All right, public hearing is closed, so we can deliberate further if we want to, or I will accept a motion. And there is a suggested motion in the packet.

I recommend approval of the amendments to the governing body that were presented to Planning Commission.

I have a motion. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

OK. We will take a roll call vote from the right.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. All right. The motion passes 8-0. 0. Yep. OK. Moving on, do we have any announcements or reports? No, we don't. OK. So just for members of the public who might be watching, the two people who are watching the stream and didn't watch the work session, when is the next comprehensive plan like public check-in. We'll be at the Fall Festival.

So we will have the public open house next Thursday here in City Hall in the 401 room across the hallway. That one from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. And then, yes, we will be at the Fall Festival as well. We'll have a booth set up there on Saturday. So please feel free to stop on by. I'll be there with my smiling face as well as one or two members of the consultant team as well.

So hope to see you there. Terrific. So September 10th. the next slash first community engagement opportunity for the comprehensive plan update and so I and I also encourage County residents to participate in this because you know that's another good opportunity for our voice to be heard real quick check if I may I'd like to kind of echo that sentiment especially when it comes to the survey that we have posted up online the questionnaire

We actually have it structured such that if you are a resident of the county and not necessarily part of the incorporated Spring Hill, we still have questions for you that are kind of unique to your engagement with the city, how you're involved with the city, how you interact with it. So don't think that because you don't live in the city of Spring Hill, we don't value your input. In fact, we have a specific kind of set of questions for you if you live in the county. So thank you for bringing that up.

That's great. That is great. All right. Members of the commission, any announcements, reports? This is going to be a pretty quick meeting tonight. Accept a motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

Okay, moved and seconded. All in favor to adjourn, say aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Thanks, everyone.