Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

we covered on the first couple of meetings which was a review of the plan that was made in 2020 and adopted by the council and is online for anybody to look at. This was supposed to be the guide for the council for the growth and development of the city. We've reviewed this plan now and now we're moving on to the next phase which is uh getting public opinion and public input on where we think as a public the uh city should grow and and how it should be developed. Now tonight we're not asking for a lot of details. All we want tonight is ideas and uh we can get into details later on after the plan is put together. So, if you have ideas that you want to present regarding where the city should be going, the growth and development of the city, please, we're welcome. And it it will be less formal. So, you don't have to come up and talk by the mic. You can speak from your your chairs. So, we want this to be a lot less formal and a lot more inviting than a regular formal council meeting. Now, I've asked Dr. Morris from the college to be here this evening to give us her ideas on what what the city and the college may be doing together to both develop and and grow in this area. Now, congratulations on the agricultural uh building. We're looking forward to seeing that very soon. But we would appreciate any ideas that you have. I'm asking her to be first because she has other uh meetings to attend. So, please Dr. Morris.

I certainly appreciate that. Um, this was my first time actually looking through the plan and I thought there are a lot of really really great ideas, a lot of things that I didn't know were in the in the plan at all. So, the big areas that I saw really for partnership, the first one really was related to housing. Um, my dream has always been to have campus housing on campus. I don't know that that's going to be a reality while I'm president, but I know that students who want to come here from outside of the district or parents who are maybe having life changes have a really hard time finding affordable multi-unit housing. I saw that that was a thing that was in your plan. I think that if there's any way that a developer was interested in especially out towards that small subdivision by WTO or on drive I think that we would be able to partner and help you fill it. Um if you ever get to that point we could talk for hours about what what you want to do so it doesn't become a party central location if you will but I think affordable housing is a big issue for all of our students and for college students that's no different. So any opportunities in that regard? I looked at the bike plan. I have to admit I couldn't really make sense because I don't know all the ins and outs of the cities. But if you go on I believe it's more of an avenue on whatever the county road is. There are a lot of bikes that ride. I know rides every day to work a bike path or some kind of designation would be wonderful. I know there's a whole plan. Um I worry about the safety of people riding bikes on that road. I don't know you know how it is once you get farther out but I drove that um I think the field there was mention in there I know Mayor Kurt has talked to me about you know the opportunity for baseball softball expansion soccer I don't know will influence that I do believe that 809 is a great place that if you built the fields the tourists and the people come if that ever becomes on

your plan you Maybe we could partner and be able to utilize facilities. A sports complex. You're you saying

sports complex, whether that's um soccer, whether that's softball, baseball, it didn't really go very well, but the college can domach. That's kind of more of a philosophical. And then the last thing I saw that was really interesting was the business. So I hear a lot incubators in the area. I know one with some success in your plan. You talk about that business incubator and I really do think that we have on campus. We have economics development on campus. I think that if the city invests in that, we would be glad to be a partner to try to figure out what that looks like to support it. So that's I mean those were the things that I saw in the plan that I think were were great. Um

just a question about housing. You're talking student student housing. I think housing in general like in general our students if they're lucky here they cannot find so I had a magic wand and all the money in the world I would do about a 75 bed facility on our campus for students but there's so many other priorities I don't know that's going to happen but when I read that it really for our students especially if there was a bike up closer to that side I think Now, the bike plan, the bike path is in was in the plan. Remember, Becky, we had a bike path in the plan.

Yeah, I did see it. I couldn't make sense if it went out that road or not. I saw it kind of looped around the city. It's kind of Mormon Street's rough. You're not gonna It's got to be built. It's a tough one. And then the overpass, I know the last council meeting over. And then businesses, you know, what would that look like? I think if you were ever going to have a business, look at doing you get some college students to give you some feedback on what they would come across the overpass for you get students together talk about that so we can we can narrow those goals down to the housing bike plan sports complex of some kind hospitality training and business incubator

and and I'm saying that's really up to the city as to what you want to do but those are things that I saw in your plan that I think you can be great partners on if you decided to go that direction that's great I think anything you can do to continue to grow the is fantastic. So, thank you. Does anybody have any questions for Dr. Morris?

Stay tuned for 18 months from now when we do the grand opening on the building, our first big building in 10 years. Okay, great. Well, thanks very much. Appreciate it so much. Have a good night. It's my understanding that you have to use the microphones in order to be heard on Yeah. So, we're going to have to come up and speak into the mic. So, now the city did put out a survey requesting input from the general public and uh Dave, if you want to Absolutely.

Let's see. Anybody else have anything to say first? Oh, anybody else on comments and good mentioned housing for students, you know, how I think probably quite a few people will agree that the downtown will exploit it a bit. Well, we'll get to that if landlords convert some of those buildings into apartments and student housing.

Oh. as a possibility and that because some of them may even be vacant upstairs, but I know then you have to deal with uh fire walls and things that now exist in safety that didn't exist 30 40 years ago. But um just to get that I just want one comment on that. I don't know how long I can stay but I some of the places I travel to I have been to some places where a big Retail buildings are utilized into breaking them down into small vendor. And that would be a good opportunity too for the college to take their students that are in business and economics and retail and possibly use some of the empty buildings for um business training.

That's exactly what isn't that exactly what Tracy said. That's a business incubator she's talking about. Okay. Yeah, that would be really good. There's a lot of times where somebody says that building's too big to rent for me. I can't afford that lease. But it could be partitioned to have um several people set up small like somebody I don't know what but somebody's doing candles, somebody's doing somebody's doing soaps, somebody's doing flower arrangements. Okay, we this way a big space is being utilized by more than one retailer.

Yeah, we appreciate that. But we want we don't want to get into a lot of details tonight. We're looking more for goals than objectives than the details of doing the actual uh project. Appreciate your comments though. Thank you. Any other comments regarding the uh public comments? If not, then Dave, go ahead please on the survey. TV.

Somebody know how to turn TV on? Okay. So, this is the results of the survey we sent out. We got 131 records back online. Move the mic over to your make sure it's on. Hello.

Good. Okay. We got 131 results out of it, which I think is pretty good. Gives you a breakdown of when we got them. This must have been the first day the mailer went out and then along the line. So if we go to analyze, we can break down these questions. So out of our responses, 128 of them were residents, three were not. So this question, what type of business services would you like to see in the city of Oglesby? Number one was grocery store. And I think these your top three. So, these are our top three most prevalent results for the grocery store, some additional restaurants, and some additional retail shops. And then what areas of the cities would you like to see improved? Go. So, downtown revitalization was number one, uh, followed by economic development and fixes to further infrastructure. And then which of these options would you like to see an over uh trail connections were far and away number one? So connecting with the state parks, the MAT expansion is definitely a hot topic followed by a sports complex, a senior center, some sort of aquatic center, a community garden all kind of came in pretty close together. And then this question was which one idea that you had where you could fill out a response and we actually got quite a few uh nice paragraphs um of ideas from the public on these which was great and Walter review those we got a lot of good feedback with a lot of popular themes about three or four themes that

we got quite a bit uh in common so that's that's good to see as well and then how would you rate the overall appearance of the city of Oklahoma most people give it about a three. So to me it says well the appearance is okay. So the public's kind of saying we need to maybe clean things up a little bit, right? And then how would you rate living in the city of Oakley? We got a lot of high remarks from residents which is good to see. Reason four were the were the highest. And then another question that people filled out, why did you rate it that way? And we got again we got a lot of good uh a lot of good feedback on that. And then of the 31 or excuse me, 22 people said, "Here's my information. Contact me if you'd like to let them know more ideas." So, that's good as well. So, we we have a list of people that we need to send out some sort of email or something from further responses. We have those contacts and then I won't get the names, phone numbers, emails here, but overall I think it was uh pretty successful. This has only been out for about three weeks, right? So, I got a quite a bit of good response. And then like I said, we'll kind of review all these everybody.

Right. Great job. Are there any questions for Dave while he's still up here?

Great job. Great job. I think it gives us direction. In addition to those that uh he picked up on his survey, there were uh five hard copies delivered to city hall here. And we haven't gone through them, but uh the same questions answered by by u by people. We'll combine those into the rest of the with the rest of the data. Does anybody have any questions about the surveys, the data.

Yeah. I just that this page right here, I can um send out a link for you guys to view it as well if you need to see nice to see the graphs that you have. Yeah, because these these are more just comments on some Yeah, these are these are the word answers that I printed out. Everything else you kind of got a view on here. So, I can send out a link to that.

Terrific. Terrific. Good. Okay. And no more questions about the survey. Good. All right, let's open it up. Are there any other ideas out there from anybody about what we should be in incorporating into the comprehensive plan uh to help guide the city?

Yes. you want to come up and buy it and I feel like missing an opportunity. I can't hear her. We can't we can't hear you. She buys weed in Peru and she wants to know why we're missing the opportunity to sell it here when we grow it in school.

Well, not to sell it, but to have our name It's on the packaging when you buy it. So like everybody knows that it's from here and we grow it and they like it and so seems like a missed opportunity. There should be some representation we did this year, right? So, so there are there there are statutes that control where those stores can be placed and when you look at being how small it is and you try and put the locate something, it's too close to a school, it's too close to residential. So, it's been considered. But

I didn't know it had been considered, but there are strict statutes about it and licensing requirements, too. Right. So even even the plant that grows it, we had some residential lots that had to be zoned, reszoned to commercial to allow that plant to be built. So that's the kind of detail they need to get into when they want to locate something like that here. So thank you. Sorry not to be negative, but all right. Any more comments, suggestions, any ideas? Let's brainstorm. What's your vision for Oglesby?

I actually had a question. I was not here at the last meeting. I had prior engagements and um I wasn't really even thinking when I was kind of looking at the the questions. But one thing that just happened in this town in the last year is about the change of government. Now, we kept it in the plan, but don't you think that should have been a question on there, like how many how many people would be interested in seeing what type of government would be best for Oglesby? It's in the plan. Yeah, but it wasn't on the next five years. It was in the plan before. We kept it in the plan.

I'm going to say this. It would seem to me that if there's people in town that want to see the form of government changed, they ought to be up here and they ought to be volunteering for things that they're done done in the city and not just sitting back and saying we should change the form of government. No, but not just to see what would best fit our town because of all the stuff that we offer here. That's all. Right. Ryan, don't we have something like that in there? Any early comments? We were this kid right here. What's that? Calvin. Cal. I'm sorry. I got you mixed up with another guy. Didn't we have something like that that we left in our plan? Yeah. There were discussions. Okay.

There were two things that we put in the plan regarding the form of government. One was the uh should is there a better form of government for Aglesby? That's something that should be discussed. It should be discussed all the time. Mhm. It shouldn't just be, you know, just one time and then put it away. Is there a better form of government for second was the uh home rule?

Home rule was the other one. It's not really a form of government, but it's an opportunity that uh if by referendum we change to home rule, we can uh move funds around a a lot easier. and a lot you have to be under over 25,000 uh population for automatic home rule. Under 25,000 you have to vote referendum for home rule. So we've got that in the plan right now.

Yeah, it's it's stated in I just thought if you're saying the next 5 to 10 years, I'd hate this to just be not really looked at in the next five years. Well, it'll be up if the council when the council passes it, the comprehensive plan, the goals and objectives, you'll be in there and there'll be not only goals and objective, but who's supposed to do it and then it'll be up to the council to drive that. Like something like that, the council may create a committee. They'd have to appoint a committee to do that study as part of the comprehensive plan to get into the level of detail that would need to be to decide an issue like that. Okay, that's a good point though.

Becky,

you want to come up and speak so the public can hear you at home? Like, no. I'm retired. Come on. All right.

Hello.

It's working. So my question, Ken, and and you may be the only person who can even come close to answering this, is that like we see a lot of growth in other communities, smaller communities like my hometown, Hillsboro, Illinois. Um they're uh a lot like us, but they've really had a resurgence in their downtown in the last five or seven years. And a lot of that is driven by one or two people who come in and and invest in our community. And you see Lasal the same thing. They had one or two people who came in and put a lot of money into their downtown area. How does Oglesby find somebody like that? I mean what what is I know at one point like when we talk about a long time ago where they had a group of citizens who came together and um and helped develop the area. How do we get something like that going here now or I mean can that be a goal?

I don't have an answer to it but I think

open to it. I feel like I I personally as a citizen of this town feel like we're not open to new businesses. we have one reason or another to shut down the thought or idea because somebody's afraid it's going to stop on their business, somebody's afraid it's stop on that business. I think we need to be open to it. And I think when we're not open to things, people don't even want to attempt because it's too I'm not going to jump through 15 hoops to open a business. I'll just go elsewhere where they're going to take let me open my business. I think as a community, we need to be open to it all around and I just don't see that. I've had people I would go to being open to business, but I'm not going to fight that hard. I mean, I'm I'm going to go the easier route. Why jump through so many hoops? If you want me to be honest, that's what I see from.

Okay. So, then I think what we do is establish a goal and that goal would be to develop a committee or somebody to that would be responsible for that economic development.

I think that's a great idea. That's, you know, it's that's the goal. I think it's a great idea. You know, there was the Oglesby Progressive Association back in 1963. They were the ones that were responsible for for uh taking over the Lehi. In 1963, the uh Lehi owed $75,000 in back taxes and they were shut down. And this group of 15 people in town got together, loaned, borrowed $5,000 a piece, paid off the loan, and as a result, they ended up with Lehi, and as a result, we ended up with the pool. The Elks ended up with that property, and of course, Lent Trao family has the has the Lehi property itself. But that's how the city ended up with that property down there as a result of these 15 people who had the foresight to be able to to invest their own money and then see the returns on that. So

yeah, it it also resulted in a couple residential subdivisions down Lehi subdivision and the one on Trexler. Not sure what the name of that is, but I just feel like we're our own worst enemies with growing in this town. So the goal really is to establish a committee of some kind that is something some organization that could run with that has that objective.

Gable Mac. I think what we need to do is we need to annex in more property all around the area and star we don't do it will they're already doing it some people are against something there's only so much more so the go the goal would be to grow by annexation and make it active annexation.

Pru and Lasal both did that about no longer than that now. I've been here forever. Um 25 30 years ago is how the the north area got in. I mean they were each banging on farmers doors and annexing the Lala. no Atlantic into Peru and they struck deals and that's how that that happened. So it was the leadership of those towns that made that happen. The the mayors and the council members made that happen. Now it cost them money, right? They extend utilities and things like that, but that's that's how you do that. You you promise sewer, you promise water annexed us, you know, and look at our tax rate and and think that's how they did it. So none of those mayors are around anymore to have a discussion with, but that's how you did it.

What's your vision? that Ogal D would extend from route 17871. Yes, sir. To uh down the Lelo and then

Yeah. So, how would we uh the city would really have to ask somebody to do that,

right? it'd be on the city and they'd have because they'd have the authority to strike the deals and make the promises and and create the annexation agreements to make stuff like that happen. One thought that I has is somehow we have to we have to develop more traffic. We have to make Oglesby a destination rather than a place that people pass through. And so we need more attractions in the city. Look, when you take the city like Kazy down there, they got the biggest rocking chair and the biggest salt shaker. Metropolis has Superman down there. Uh what do we got? You know what what can we have? So we got to start thinking about how to make Ogalsby a destination. People want to come to Oglesby for some reason which would increase traffic which in turn would would uh you know develop the economic area. But we also have to improve the way the city looks because if you come into the city from either side, east or west, it doesn't look good.

Like you don't lose a tire coming over 39 first. Well, that's another problem that the tire. But just when you come in and look at it, you So my my thought is that somehow we have to improve the entrances to the city. Yeah, I will say on this on the comments on the comments that was one of the most popular was just general cleanliness and looks coming into the city starting with the bridge over 39 and then coming into downtown just general looking inviting was a big theme in the comments.

Also in the comments is go a little farther than that is the city's not following their ordinances. I mean, they just talked about it at the last city council meeting. Why have ordinances if you're not going to enforce them? And there's tons of comments in here about that. So, that's back on the city, though. So, the goal would be enforcement of the ordinances.

Yes. So the the building maintenance ordinances and I suppose parking and lawn care and stuff like that, right? Kill the not kill the weeds, but keep the grasses cut and the buildings in usable shape. Ken, could the goal be that the plan commission meets more regular to also have check-in points with the city to say, you know, make sure they're working towards this comprehensive plan. I know it's supposed to be a given, I guess you could say, but I don't see that the plan commission has ever really met on a regular basis specifically to stay up on the comprehensive plan. And you know like also can we include in this comprehensive plan that we should get some uh input from department heads or the commissioners or something on like a quarterly basis like you know what have they done and be able to keep track of this plan on a shorter timeline because like a lot of us up here we're not involved in this you know and then we don't know what the city's done if you don't pay attention to the meetings, the minutes and all of that. So, I was just thinking how we can make that one of the goals as well that the plan commission is is formally meeting, you know, as we should operate to make sure that the city's following through

regular review of the or of the of the comprehensive plan, the goals in the comprehensive plan. Yes. Yeah. And I do have uh one thing that comes to my mind. Um you know if we want Ogalsby to grow uh to think about whether our schools are keeping pace and what if we explored the idea of a more modernized um like combined campus for the public schools where they were all in one and where there's a new school and repurpose the Lincoln and Washington school.

I talked with Dr. bill on and asked him if he would had any comments and any input for our comprehensive plan. He said he's he's perfectly satisfied where he is right now and everything has been going as he has no plans for anything in the future like you're talking one you know one campus. It's not to say it, you know, he if we put it to him that we could build one that he wouldn't take it, but uh but at this point he has nothing in his plans for a campus. Well, I thought that schools got good.

Yeah, I was going to say that's another theme in here is that this every a lot of people are very happy with the schools here and people moved here for the schools, myself included. So that's a popular comment. So if they were like combined, so the the survey came back, number two was sports complex, number three was senior center or activities. So if you repurpose those building again, you told us to think big and you repurpose those, you can, you know, use those for some of those other things that fall into place without necessarily building new buildings for those things.

So that's my think big that I want to throw out there. Where are we going to put a building now to house everybody for the school? Well, there's like all the space on the other side of

uh to the west because that's also in our plan is to develop more that way. I hate to hate to talk about ancient history all the time, but 1956, the Cushing Smith plan, the first comprehensive plan for the city showed a brand new school comp campus out west out there by Burger King and out there in that area and that was in the 1956 original comprehensive plan. And the last thing I want to add is that uh Lake Lincoln school again I'm not saying that our schools are bad or anything. This is again a think big moment but that would serve as a great incubator place for businesses economic development to partner with the college like Dr. Morris has already stated tonight. She would love to partner on those things. So you will you would open up those opportunities for some of those other ideas again without having to try and create new buildings. So

I think the only problem with that is the access in that area. You know the trans getting in and out of that area around Lincoln school. But that's those are I don't want to get involved in details tonight. Well, generally the incub like business incubators are not like I mean it could be more you know like uh graphic design student. So it's not really like people visiting your business as you know. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Good idea.

It's providing them a space to get started that's affordable maybe even free to get out there and get going. And then that might make them want to choose Ogulby. That might make them want to you know choose a downtown building that's vacant. Yes.

And I was always wondering why certain blocks there by the house, you know, and then two houses away there's no sidewalk. You got to go walk on the street, you know, and I thought, you know, you need sidewalk pedestrian for, you know, walking in the street where the car should be going. How come some homeowners got it and some don't? Yeah. So, that's going to be that's part of our So, that's that's covered in our our infrastructure improvements.

And some people don't some points the building inspector enforce that and sometimes they did not. Yeah, I understand. Right. most of the and then how you when you walk you better go you know the middle of the street walk

right so it gets it gets gets back to two things they're discussing it in infrastructure right to improve sidewalks throughout the town and it gets back to what we're talking about Rich said about code enforcement it's it's in the subdivision ordinances or plat that all those homes were supposed to have sidewalks people ignored it and it wasn't enforced so that's why we have the gaps We can't answer that question. It just wasn't.

I agree.

I think it's a good idea. I think honestly one of the things I was going to suggest is that the planning commission sets priorities and identifies like what are the things that we really want to see and what other things you know down the line are things that you know uh would be nice but not necessarily totally crucial. Um but I honestly think that one of the main priorities for the city should be that we make it a veryable and very walkable city. Sidewalks is part of that or sidewalks are part of that rather. Um but one of the things maybe for the planning commission to discuss as well is I mean if we were to compel people who don't have sidewalks to put in sidewalks I mean I think we probably have the ability to tax them to pay for that. Is that the way we're going to approach that by saying, "Hey, you've been out of compliance for this long, so now you're going to have to cough up for a sidewalk." I think that might not go over very well. Um, you know, do you do that? Do you strike a deal with them? What would be, you know, the best way to approach getting sidewalks in those neighborhoods where there aren't sidewalks? Because I think it could be a very politically volatile issue. So, you're talking about developing a plan for enforcing the ordinances,

which which is the council's mayor's responsibility. It's it's beyond our pay grade to to do that in my opinion. Yeah, it's give some background on this. I was wonder. So, back in the 80s and 90s, that's when a lot of these rules came in place to sidewalks were required and they weren't all enforced equally across gaps. I will say within the last 5 years, we've changed our permit process for building new homes. We may have put some protections in there. There will never be a new home again that is ever built in the city that will not have a sidewalk attached to it. Right. So,

because of those things now, we've also taken another step that we've also done the school program to try to fill in some of those gaps. That did not take care of 100% of the city. It took care of a lot of portions of it. And there's school program. We're still trying to uh the commissioner is trying to to get that through and we're going to see that in the next little bit. But there is a longer discussion. What do you do about the ones that are not

they don't have it now and they were supposed to have it or what do you do about that and tech when they built the home it was never requirement? Is that something we're going to come out of taxpayer dollars to generate? Maybe that's something the plan commission wants to talk about and say we should develop a plan because that would be a costly thing and like commissioner said it's either we're going to pay for it out of taxpayer dollars or you're going to impose something upon the residents that were required to have it. The problem with that is you're having people that might have moved

and it was somebody three or four homes ago that owned it that had the requirement to put it in. That's a real political thing to start saying, I need you to pay for these sidewalks in front of your home because it was required back then. So there's there's a challenge there and I do think the plan commission is a good spot to talk about that because whatever plan we come up with, you know, it's going to be political. Good good point

to to fill in a few blanks there. The safe routes to school project is on I do September 19th letting all right so we'll have some news next month. Hopefully, it still falls in budget because we put in that project five years ago. Um, and to follow up with yours about enforcing ordinances, the the clerk's office now requires escrow to put up by the homebuilders so that when the project is done, there are sidewalks are complete in front of those properties. So, that's one good thing that the council has done is put that in place. to answer your question about trying to fill those gaps. We still have the problem though of no sidewalks and it's either we didn't build them, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, but we're not trying to get into a lot of details about that, but we should put down that that this is an issue and it should be given an objective in in the plan. Dave, did you have something?

I also think that there's been at some point question about people. I'm sure about it as well, but how far do we want to extend sidewalks out west? I mean, you do have a lot of people who do walk that way. Um, you'll see it on a regular basis. Uh, and you know, it might be nice to have sidewalks at least, you know, out to the interstate or something like that. Make that at least as walkable as you possibly can. I don't know. sidewalks everywhere. But I I definitely do think the city should be made to be a more lockable place. Austin, we did have that in the plan. We discussed it this year.

If I could ask Mayor Curran and Austin, um in a nutshell, if you had top five goals, would you read them off? Could would you give us an idea on what they would be as officers?

But I would say economic development. We need I was gonna say something now. My thoughts are I appreciate what everybody's doing here and I think it's important to getals and objectives here. One of the things I'd like you guys to consider is how you can convert those into actionable right now. There's a lot of different interpretation comprehensive for example there's nobody in the city we don't want the problem what does that mean for example there is quite a bit difference and that is perfectly fine that really is I think the opinion is so wide I'm hoping that the comprehensive plan for example I know comprehensive plan what does that specific There is a difference of opinions about who wants to develop. I have a council that doesn't want to create more and that's fine if that's the case but I do think that that is part of bringing people into downtown. So my thoughts are whatever objectives that this body comes up with I would recommend think about how you can put that into an actionable decision that's going to help guide the council to have opinions that are related to each other but economic development I want to see for me personally I want to see a business park or a that's what I want to see out there because that's a thousand jobs if I can create thousand jobs out or some kind of site like that that's going to make it easier we contact different don't have enough economic opportunity and that's happening So getting those jobs there, that's going to generate a lot of these other things that people really want to see, which is restaurants,

things to do, things for adults, things like that. I would say agree. I think economic developments very I think of our compared to especially Ottawa. I think Ottawa with the big central park that they have kind of just the way their downtown is laid out. I think it lends itself to you know you can really make that a nice downtown. Ours it's a little bit kind of patchwork or whatever. I I think you have to do because our downtown isn't necessarily laid out, you know, the most desirable fashion is I think that you have to lead from outside first and I really think you have to capitalize on as an outdoors destination. Uh and for me what that looks like one of my top priority honestly uh one of the things I really think we should do is really really really focus on uh the bike and connecting to those trails. I I think if you can connect local speed uh to those parks especially by bike you will have all sorts of people uh from city who people in the city I mean even if you go to Chicago if you go to any large city you go to more mediumsiz cities you have seen in recent years a proliferation of bike lanes they're everywhere people urbanite people love bikes and especially if you can give them a break from you know, the concrete jungle come here and bike around largely in nature and in a small town setting. I I think that would be I I think it' be a very very good forest destination. So whether you know I've seen the plans for the different bike paths one along 71 blah blah blah connecting all the way

to I think something like that should definitely be a major priority for I think bring those people here and I think if those people are coming here there will be a market uh there will be there will be a market created for you will have people who who see all these people coming here and the value of properties probably downtown will probably hitch up quite a bit because people will say, "Hey, you know, this is a this is a really big tourist destination. People that want to experience the outdoors, people who want to bike around, people who want to explore parts, you know, you know, Udica, their downtown's full. We don't really there's not a whole lot of real estate there. Look at this town. There's a whole lot of real estate. You know, their main street is a heck of a lot bigger than Udica's." And I think you could potentially see people and wanting to, you know, even buy homes out for people and develop them uh into retail spaces. So, I I I just I don't know if we can leave with downtown first. I think the downtown in our case might have to be something that kind of, you know, uh is ultimately downtown ultimately culmination of all of our efforts. But I also agree to Jason on the west side. like to see some sort of a business part, some sort of additional industry. I think that would be great. Um, but I guess the second thing I would say uh is kind of uh what Dr. says housing. Um there is in this in this area largely I mean there is a real shortage of housing especially for somebody you know like myself you know uh it doesn't come you know and for anybody really it doesn't come cheap but I I think there's a lot of people who want to live in this you know there's probably a lot of people who do want to live in speed where they grew up but you know houses go on the market and they're scooped up like that or there's houses on the market that not a lot of people

necessarily want to move you know, and so I I think the development of housing would be another big thing, especially if you want to talk economic development, especially expanding retail. I mean, you could sustain a lot more retail if you had more people living here. Uh, and so I think, you know, I think we're kind of bottlenecked by our limited housing. So I guess I would say housing and then pass my two things. The rest of the stuff. So what I'm hearing is we want to really define what economic development means.

I mean that's that's that's it. We talk about this economic development but what is it? And so it has to be defined. And I heard also that we need some kind of a marketing plan for the city. something that pulls all this stuff together and says this is what we should be doing and maybe we got to go to the outside to get that help somebody to develop a marketing plan and maybe this is where the college comes in maybe maybe there's somebody out there in the college that has that kind of expertise expertise that we can join with so I think uh defining economic development and developing a marketing Mac, I seen you over and I didn't want to forget you.

Appreciate it. Development to make sure we get our infrastructure People want to come here and live in the water.

Thanks, Mac. Uh, thank you. One more item that uh uh someone mentioned to me and that's the two the two cement mills. Is there anything that anybody has even of a goofy idea on what we might do with those cement mills?

A couple weeks ago, somebody was looking at them to do something with them. I don't know the whole story, but I know that they were there looking like Becky. making them decorative. Yeah. I don't know how many of those buildings are

has done a great job with that. There's your attraction you were talking about, Ken. Something like that. And I wonder if the college art department might be, you know, the the way to go with that one. They've done murals at Washington. What? They've done murals at Oglesby. Washington. Yeah.

The city owns that. No. Oh, because you were asking what can you do? Well, you could do that as a mini museum kind of thing, but I didn't know. So you're just talking about the look of it. Yeah. Or or you can't you can't arrange it so that a section of it tells the history of the Portland cement um in there and they can bring people as a tourist attraction. You can't do that. Can do anything but you don't own it. But you you cooperate with the people that do own it.

Oh okay. Yeah. I mean you know just look how that one prison where they Oh yeah. People all the time just to go see what you got that cement thing that that's that's the history of this community because I thought some place like this museums and that if you did a a small history with a video like they can listen to and all that and then the murals if you're coming from you're going to go right past that. That's a draw. That would be part of the marketing plan. Could be part.

And and just throwing something else out there, if you if you could with tall silos and vertical walls, if you could create some kind of rock climbing Yeah. experience there. So

with the owner, there was a company that does that out in Colorado that converts into interested because I I love the idea of actually looking into the opportunity for different cleanants that might come with that because there is a on it way back.

Well, I'm not sure. Matter of fact, they wanted to make sure people out of there for trespassing because of their own and and the other the other thing is that the the coral corable areas are is now owned by IDNR. So there's not going to be any future mining there. So, IDNR is going to develop that as a recreational area, campgrounds, and

that whole area up to the river is going to be developed. Both sides of the bridge under the Jonesville Bridge over there. So, IDNR is creating an opportunity for us to piggy back on to. We just have to figure out a way to do that. So when they develop those campgrounds and those activities, people will be coming through Oldby and we just need to be ready, you know, have our best face on, everything cleaned up and, you know, make make it welcoming. Yeah. Make it welcoming, right?

Yeah. I have a question because number two on one of the questions was retail stores, but there's a lot of um downtown areas that are apartments and not re retail stores. I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but if you look downtown, there might be really a handful of open buildings. So we we have ordinances in place when we did the land development code that any of the first floor spaces that have been occup unoccupied for a year can no longer be used for apartmental spaces. So that makes areas available for for retail space. So but they have to be abandoned for a year. They're already being used as a rental space for apartments. we have to let them stay until they abandon it for a year. So, we're we're moved in the right direction to cover that.

We addressed that. Yeah. Back in 2018.

So, there that's a good example. You know, people don't see the little things that the councils have done over the years to try and clean up the act to try and get things organized and and ready to make people want to come to be. Then of course we have the bent building over here and it's not the most attractive building and be nice to be able to do something there, you know, windows open all the time. different businesses, but we have business that come in here. People come in about buildings that are available and not a lot of buildings that are sitting empty are us. Those people are just sitting on those buildings and using them for storage.

Okay, I think we beat up a lot of issues this evening. It's really great to be to hear all this. Any other comments, suggestions? What we'll be doing now is putting all this together into readable forms and uh our next meeting we'll have uh probably summarize all this stuff and we'll be coming down the home stretch with the comprehensive plan. I figure maybe two more meetings, Kevin. Yeah, thereabouts.

Thereabouts. So, if there's any more input from either the commissioners, the council, and your department heads, you know, we we'd appreciate those so we can incorporate those into the plan. So, any other comments, Dave, how long is the survey going to be left open? Uh, really as long as we want. I mean, I can close it or I can leave it open for however long we want. See if anybody else wants to have input. You might want to say a set of time frame so that any any comments will be then you know kind of looked at by the How about we set our next meeting date for this topic

and make the cut off date a week before that. That gives you time to organize it. Sure. And get it to us so we can review it before the meeting. Sure. Because there there's a lot to read. What I'm reading is all basically downtown like it just needs to be better and lower taxes. That's 90% of the combination. Okay. Yeah, that doesn't surprise you though, does it? No, I agree with it 100%. So, okay. So, uh with that the next uh what a month from now, how long will usually meet on Wednesdays? Yeah. Yeah, we can meet October

September September 24th. September 24th.

You don't. We'll keep you posted though. Okay. September 24th. Secondly, we do have to have a meeting on the Oglesby storage. We got all the paperwork in finally and uh this is a meeting uh with the final plans and uh we don't have to give 15 days notice on this one. So is it possible we could meet next Wednesday? September 3rd. Week after week after September 10th. September 10th. Okay.

I'm I'm not Won't be here on the 10th. I won't be here. Are you always meeting on Wednesdays? Well, for this one, we don't have to meet on a Wednesday because I I miss a class every time you meet on a Wednesday. Does it Does the ninth make it any easier for you guys on a Tuesday? Are you just gone? I'm gone. That's the first day I'm gone for vacation. So, what's a better night? We'll do September. How many people do we need? We need at least six. Okay. Well, let's see what six can come so we can get this moving along. What I mean, the people get annoyed because they're waiting so long. So, what six? Well, they're not waiting long. Just I can do the ninth. Nth. Okay. Yeah, I can't do the nth, but I could do the 10th. I can do the 10th.

I can do the 10th or I can do either. So, how many can do the 10th? Maybe raise your hand. How many can do the 10th? How many can do the 10th? [Laughter] How many can do the ninth?

Tie, right? Hold on. She's double checking. Oh, I haven't eaten. Sorry. Which is which is better for your ninth or 10th? She can't do either. Me either. Neither. I think if you have a quorum, Ken, it'll be enough. It seems like a lot of people can make the nth or Yeah, I think we can make the Let's Let's try it. Yeah, for sure. Can you make the 10th? You can make the 10th. I can make the 10th. Okay, let's have it on the 10th. You should be there for You should be for this one. Yeah. So, let's make it on on September 10th and it'll be to review Oglesby storage plans, the final plans that were submitted. Six o'clock. Six o'clock. Yeah. Six o'c. Okay.

Okay. Good. Any other comments, suggestions? Miss Barbed. I don't know. We can talk about it at home. So, so the city the city in the last few few months has adopted new building codes and maintenance codes and stuff like that. So, the city's property maintenance code could be reviewed to see if there could be steps to clean something like that up,

see if there's any violations. And there there are a lot of places around the city of Oglesby that that ordinance should be looked at and say how can we fix this or they got to tell them to quit doing that type of thing. So okay, how many more meetings do you think this is going to the comprehensive plan? Yeah, two. Can we just set up the next two with everything? Can we plan now? Does anybody have a problem with that? So we can plan around this before looking at September. Every day is Saturday for me. So it's not a problem. Months from now.

Well, if if if you could make this this meeting in and plan around it is what she's saying. We're meeting on the 24th. That's the next meeting. September 24th. October now. So we got that on right. So it'll be October would be our final meeting on the comprehensive plan. October what? It' be 22nd. October 22nd. Let's put it down. See what happens.

It's as official as it can be. I second. Okay. Okay. So, we have the next two meetings scheduled and the meeting scheduled for Oglesby storage. So, okay. Any other comments before we close the meeting. Again, I appreciate all the public input. Uh we'll take all this and get it compiled and uh and get the plan moving forward. So, again, thank you. I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. I'll make a motion. Motion made and seconded. All those in favor? The eyes have it. So be it. Thank you very much everybody for your comments.

I know. Yeah. I'm here.