Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the Planning Commission meeting for February 24th to order uh the first uh item per action would be approval of the minutes from the previous meeting commissioner St say so move commissioner whoie seconds moved and seconded to approve the minutes from the previous meeting all in favor say I I opposed all right the next item uh on the agenda would be the open Forum uh that's a time for uh community members to discuss things generally that aren't on the agenda or to um receive comments that may have been submitted ahead of time uh planner Crosby or planner VI do we get any comments electronically or otherwise chair no I did not okay all right um seeing no uh uh here for the open form we'll just continue the next item would be to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting we have a motion commissioner H approves the agenda motions to approve the agenda and a second commissioner Charlton seconds all in favor please say I I I opposed all right the next item on on the agenda would be officer elections do we have a staff report chair thank you we do um the bylaws of the Planning Commission require that the Planning Commission hold an annual organizational meeting at the first regular meeting in February and elect from its membership a chairperson vice chairperson and secretary any member of the Planning Commission May nominate another member or they may nominate themselves a nomination of an officer requires a motion a second and a majority vote um um according to the bylaws a majority vote is necessary to First elect a chairperson and then to elect the remaining officers the chairperson vice chairperson and secretary are to take office immediately upon election and

hold office until their successors are elected next year there is no limit on tenure except for the officer's willingness to serve in such capacity the chairperson is responsible for conducting all Planning Commission meetings and public hearings the chairperson is also responsible for representing the Commission in dealing with the city council and staff the vice chairperson fulfills the responsibilities of the chairperson in the event the chairperson is absent and the secretary assumes these responsibilities when both the chairperson and vice chairperson are absent and signs all minutes and official commission documents by motion um you may elect the Planning Commission chairperson Vice chairperson and secretary thank you um so do we have any um uh nominations for uh Planning Commission chair I'd like to nominate for chair uh commissioner H VI Johnson accept it yes I would I will I will accept that and I'll suck in it right any other nominations all right um hearing none then um all those in favor of uh electing commissioner homet Johnson as chair please say I I opposed all right uh the next item would be to elect the vice chair uh any nominations I would like to nominate commissioner stura for vice chair I would second that do you do you accept the nomination I right any other nominations all right hearing none I'll in favor of uh commissioner stura for vice chair please say I I

opposed right and the next item would be the election of the secretary any nominations I would like to uh nominate uh Matt commissioner charson I'll accept we have a second I'll second that Comm H any other nominations all right hearing none all those in favor please say I I opposed all right excellent um the next item on the agenda would be liaison do we have a staff report for that yes thank you chair the role of liaison is to keep the Planning Commission informed of other work or decisions happening in the City by attending or watching meetings or reading recent minutes and sharing updates with members of the Planning Commission a description of each liaison position is in the staff report um I won't read it all but I will um just um just list what what each what who holds each um liaison position currently currently um the chair chair HC Johnson holds the city council Lea on position commissioner c kosi um holds the Community Services Commission leison position commissioner sta holds the HRA leison position commissioner Canal holds the Richfield School Board position um commissioner surma holds the Transportation Commission position uh commissioner hoie uh holds the Chamber of Commerce position and commissioner terdon holds the sustainability commission position um you can discuss and agree upon which commissioner will serve as Le liaison to any board or commission uh I don't think you necessarily need to motion but but you can just discuss and agree upon it anyone have feelings about this go

ahead commissioner chair I was just going to say I've been um serving as the lead of the Chamber of Commerce and it's fine I'm happy to do it um I'm generally sharing information with them about going on Planning Commission it's very rare that there's anything at all that comes up that I bring to to the this commission so I'm happy to do that continue to do that that's fine um but if there's a need for a different uh L on ship that would be more I'm happy to do that as well I just want to bring it up as offer it up if someone wanted to exit one or if there's one that's unattended right now I'd be happy to to chat about that too so just wanted to open that up commissioner Kowski I am interested in trying out some new commissions so yeah would you be willing to step down from Chamber of Commerce are we trading is that what's happening I am exting what's your what's your community services okay how often when do they meet uh every month and they're pretty good with updates I just read the agenda minutes and get a good grasp of what's going on big Focus right now is Wood Lake okay so yeah be interesting okay cool can kind of see whatever else says no one else wants Community Services all right um uh who who El we have community services and we have Chamber of Commerce all right so we still need um city council and I would would be happy to uh turn that one over or continue my preference would be to do city council or school board but I have no strong feelings about any of them I was just gonna add that I'm happy with h so um would be happy continuing it unless somebody else wants to take it over if anyone else interested in H or city council right then yeah we can continue with that so we still need um

sustainability transportation and School Board I'm happy to stand sustainability unless anyone else wants it I'm happy with where I'm at there's a big shake up it sounds like everyone's pretty content though and folks who wanted to change have switched so I think we're sounding pretty content unless I'm wrong if you're not everyone everyone Miss s of nicing their commission or their leips oh no it's fine um yeah if you wanted to switch is it City I'm sorry remind me the name of it again Community Services okay cool yeah I'm fine with that you up right we can just say by unanimous consent then so unless someone has an objection we'll just keep going commissioner cani will remain on uh School Board School Board yeah okay he's not here so we'll Pi for right you can talk about it next year all right um so the next item of the agenda would be the uh review of the Planning Commission bylaws can we get the report yes thank you chair part three section three of the bylaws requires that the Planning Commission review the bylaws each year at the February organizational meeting the city has selected Civic plus as a new agenda building software platform this new system will streamline the creation of agendas and packets for both the city council and all commissions all within a single platform as we begin the process of creating templates for our agendas in the new system we would like to make things more uniform the council H the Council on the HRA and the Eda all have the same order of operations with the open form occurring before the approval of the minutes the Planning Commission has approval of the minutes before the open form therefore staff proposes changing the order of operations to put the open form before approval of the minutes if any of the Commissioners have any other change they'd like to consider

now would be um a good time to bring it up for discussion by motion you can amend the recommended um staff changes for the bylaws sure who we have a question um so we approve the agenda after the open Forum but the open forum is for items that are not on the agenda what happens if something is added to the agenda after you know I mean just should the open Forum be after we've planned it on agenda so we can decide what will be discussing the open form that's not on the agenda I think the the practice about um open forum for things on the agenda that is just the suggestion but people are free I mean that's what we just say we we say like generally for items not on the agenda but I think that the way it's written someone could talk about something in the agenda um sure my my thought was someone comes in because new fresh Hot Topic and then we want to add it to the agenda it's like okay great we should have that conversation later you know I I think that was discussed I can't remember if it was last year the year before I believe we amended the bylaws to change to put it in that order because I think it used to be we approved the agenda then there was the open Forum but I think other other commissions had the open Forum first as well and the idea was that if something were to come up we could then add it to the agenda amend the proposed agenda and proceed from there I think that was a year or two ago see staff could correct me if I'm wrong but I think we had this discussion um chair commissioner is actually the reason why we made that change a a year or so ago was because we were unable to change it in the platform and that we're using now and we wanted the bylaws to amend with our to to align with our actual practices but I think it makes sense to have the for first because then you if if there was a desire to you could add it to the agenda yeah any other

discussion all right we would need a motion to uh adopt the staff recommendations for bylaws changes commissioner charlson makes a motion to amend part one section s of the Planning Commission bylaws commissioner whoie seconds all right it has been moved and seconded to amend the bylaws uh all those in favor please say I I opposed right the amendments are adopted the next item on the agenda then would be the um scheduling of meetings for the next year do we have a report on that yes thank you chair during last year's bylaws review the Planning Commission indicated a preference for annual rescheduling of Planning Commission meetings that fall on City observed holidays this year the main meeting falls on Memorial Day staff recommends res scheduling the May meeting to Wednesday May 28th which would be the next date that the chambers are available the other alternative would be Tuesday the 20th while the December meeting for 2025 does not fall on a holiday the Planning Commission has traditionally voted to reschedule this meeting earlier due to end ofe travel Arrangements staff recommends rescheduling the December meeting to two weeks earlier Monday December 8th some of the other days that that would be available w we're we're not available so that that's why it's a little bit early um in the attached to the staff report is a list of basically all of the holidays for the next for the following year um and the proposed alternative dates for Planning Commission meetings um and then you can um you can motion to approve the rescheduling of each of the meetings and

if there's any other meeting you'd like to discuss you can bring it up now all right any discussion if I remember last year we had quite a long discussion to iron this out and this was kind of what we came up with I think we run around in circles and came back to how we had it yeah yeah and this seems to make the most sense and with that said I would like to make a motion to a rescheduling of the May Planning Commission meeting from Monday May 26th to Wednesday May 28th can I also make a an also to move the December 22nd meeting to December 8th commissioner whoie hardly seconds all right all those in favor of changing the dates of the May and um December meetings please say I I I opposed all right that is adopted uh the next item would be liaison reports so Community Services advisory is your mic is your mic on Wood Lake design plans are near in completion construction bids opened up last week and then a presentation will be given to city council about the exhibits at Wood Lake um they've also appointed a new person on a three-year term to the Friends of wood Lake board approved by consensus EXC the next item would be city council and I do not have a report um so then we would have H no report all right school board he is not here uh Transportation Commission yes the Transportation Commission met on February 5th and their main topic was a presentation by staff from Metro Transit discussing proposed changes to bus stop locations as part of the uh nicholet Avenue reconstruction that will take place in

2026 uh the presented some data on um bus stop usage along nickolet and where they're proposing to um consolidate bus stops along that Corridor and gather feed back from the Commissioners all right thank you uh Chamber of Commerce no report all right and sustainability no report all right uh the next on the agenda then would be uh city planners reports commissioner via commissioner or sorry planner via planner Crosby thank you chair and Commissioners um on January 28th the city council approved the second reading of the amendment to the sign code to permit Dynamic drive-through signs um for those businesses that have drive-throughs also on January 28th the city council had a work session to discuss limiting short-term rentals but were undecided on the minimum duration to be imposed they asked staff to solicit feedback from the broader community so we have put together a survey that was released on February 13th and will close on March 7th on February 11th the city council approved the site plan for the Wood Lake Nature Center um and uh we well we did anticipate the center would um be closed in demoed in early March but now it's looking like that is being pushed back by a month or so um and then on February 19th Johnny opara with Jo companies hosted a neighborhood open house for the Penn Station Apartments project um the open house was located at the Wood Lake Nature Center um and uh was sparsely attended uh the apartments project would be located at 6501 and 6525 Penn Avenue so kind of right across from the um Ark Value Village and the America's Best

Eyeglasses um there is um a correction that is needed uh this uh open house for the uh Loos line Food Hall project at the um Amphitheater site uh was uh postponed uh we're hoping that it'll be rescheduled in early March so scratch that from your calendars if you had planned it on attending um and then finally mic is still working to refine their plans and has tentatively scheduled a joint city council Planning Commission work session for Tuesday April 22nd at 6m thanks thank any questions any questions um I might ask that when you find out about the rescheduled um Food Hall if you could send out an email uh to us certainly I think that's one that will have high Community interest and so it might be good if at least some of us can go oh and Ruby just just reminded me that we have not had any uh for formal land use applications for the March meeting um we um always wait until the um public notice deadline before formally only canceling the meeting but it's looking like it's going to be canceled yeah thanks any other questions about the planner report all right um I would entertain a motion to adjourn commissioner whoie motions to adjourn the meeting commissioner surma seconds and all those in favor of adjourning please say I I I opposed and we stand adjourned