Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I call the order call to order the planning commission for t Thursday, March 26th. If you please rise, we'll do a pledge and a moment of silence. Please pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Amen. Thank you very much. If you call the roll, please. Stan Schmidt here. Scott Stagger here. Angelo Loo here. Daniel Malone. Maria Mill here. Amy, I'm here. Thomas Jordan,

I am here. Thank you very much. We have a quum. We're ready to go. First item of uh on the agenda is the election of new officers. Delayed by about a month, but uh but hey, we're here. Nominations. We're going to need nominations for a chair and a vice chair to take over for the rest of this the year. I'd like to nominate uh Scott Sager for chair. I'll second that. Scott, any other nominations for chair? Any other nominations? Seeing none, we'll call the uh nominations for chair closed. Do I have a nomination for vice chair?

Didn't even ask you if you want to do it, Scott. Yeah, I'll do it. I'd like to nominate Stan Schmidt. A nomination for Stan. I'll second that. Nomination in a second. Any other nominations for vice chair? Any other nominations? And we'll close the nomination since we have one for each. Dan, you good? Yep. Yeah. Uh we have I didn't have any campaign. Last time he denied me, so I'm just making sure. Uh call uh we'll just we can do a vote by acclamation. We have one of each. Good with that. I'm good. Sure. All those in favor by saying I

I oppose. No. Congratulations. Scott, as your new chair, stand as vice chair. I'm going to go find a new seat. That takes effect immediately. You got to move. Yeah, it happens now. I don't think I have gave you an easy one, too.

You know what else, Scott? You're not allowed to be absent. Oh, but I have Stan. There you go. You're in good hands. Sometimes that works. Thank you very much. Nomination. Uh, and I obviously will accept. Um, okay. So, we have elected our officers. Uh, consideration of minutes. Did everybody have a chance to review the minutes? I make a motion to approve the minutes of February 26th. Sorry. Second. Okay. Uh, any discussion or items for adjustment? Hearing none. Uh, and we'll call that vote. All in favor? I.

Okay. Any opposed? Hearing none. Uh, the minutes are approved. We have uh up in front of us an application for special exception on a retail nursery and garden supplies uh facility. Can I get a um to get a motion first? Motion to approve case number C-26-00001. Second. Thank you very much. Okay. So, uh staff, would you please let us know what we're looking at?

Good good evening. Susette Cameron Planning Community Development. The subject property is located on the south side of Fern Park Drive east of Taylor Road behind the allboard storage uh development in 2025 of December. The subject property was reszoned to the city's agricultural zoning district. And at that time it was indicated that the applicants property owners were going to be looking at a special exception to operate a retail and garden uh nursery facility within the agricultural zoning. This is what is before you this evening. The proposed retail wholesale nursery would be located on the west half of the 9.37 acre property. The proposed owners are planning to demolish the dilapidated home that is there today and rebuild a home to live on the east side of the property and to run the hotel wholesale and retail nursery business. The applicants currently operate a retail wholesale business Prices Mulch and dirt or excuse me Prices Dirt and Mulch at 1710 right across the street on Fern Park Drive. And they plan to relocate their business and also to have their home. The proposed retail and wholesale nursery would include a fenced in outdoor area for the planting and for the plants and the mulch material with a 400 square foot office building or office. Yeah, office building. Access to the proposed retail wholesale nursery will be through the planned shared access drive through the allboard storage development to the west and it'll go out to a signalized intersection out to Taylor Road. Based on the findings in the sta in the staff report, the proposed use meets the special exception criteria in the land development code and staff recommends

approval for this request for a special exception and is here to answer any questions that you may have. Our property owners are here. Sorry. Thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions for staff? Yeah, me. No, I don't. hearing on. I thank you very much for that. Thank you. Um would the property owners like to come up and speak?

Hi, I'm Dan Bortis and my wife Sandy Bordis. Sandy Bortis. Thanks for coming. Glad to be here. We're here if you have any questions. Um, like she said, we do operate across the street and my property owners where we lease right now are here as well and we're looking at down the road trying to move our business over there and expand for the city of Portage. Terrific. Anyone have any questions for business owners? Yeah, I remember when this one came forward and this was the plan. So, I think we were all prepared for this. Yeah. Coming this way. I I'm surprised that the house is going to be torn down. I thought that was a historic structure there.

Old and historic are not always the same thing. It's occupied by some raccoons. Yeah, I've been in there. I've been in there. Oh, so we're just we're destroying some endangered species property. Homesteading new home. No additional comments or questions? No. Well, thank you very much for being here. We appreciate you. Thank you for your time. Thanks. Any uh comments on the proposal? Public. Oh, I'm sorry. Apologies. Any comments from the public? Where's Robert? I was going to say where is Robert? Interesting in action.

Somebody go check on Rob. I'm sorry. Uh no comments from the public. Thank you very much. Uh hearing none any additional comments or questions or discussion uh from the board. Saying anything on your end? Nothing. Nothing here. Okay. Uh this may be the one of the faster meetings we've ever had. So um I will call the vote. Uh all in favor of uh accepting this propos I've got to call the roll. My apologies. Please call. Stan Schmidt. Yes. Scott, yes. Angela Luke, yes. Maria Mills, yes. Football Fam, yes. Yes. Have to smack the on. Mhm.

Uh that was our only item of business. We do have sorry announced the count. Oh 6. The vote was 6. The motion passes. Good. Uh thank you very much for that. Um I have time now for commissioner comments. Stan. Nothing down here. Nothing down there. I I will apologize for this again and probably more times going forward. I do not recall your first name. Angela. Angela. Do you have any comments? Uh no I don't. Thanks. Okay. You're up. Tom. I know Tom. No, thanks staff for doing such a great job. And unfortunately, we're not at Thanksgiving for pumpkin bread. So, yeah,

maybe you'll bring Easter candy next month. I understand there are some seeds that we can purchase over there and we can start. I'll just give them to you if you want them. So, we're going to share a little bit uh of gardening opportunities here, Miss Maria. Um, no, I think I'm good. Okay, Bo. Nothing. Thank you. Uh well then mine will be thanks for this uh position and then thank you to the IT people in this building who are both patient and capable and for people like me who are Apple users uh are willing to tolerate anything that's not an actual PC product and spent the better part of 30 minutes with me today trying to make my email work again. So I appreciate that. It's part of the initiation here. Yeah,

they made it clear that my choice in computers was not the appropriate one from their perspective. Uh, and so we had a lengthy discussion about Apple versus PC for for quite some time. Um, staff comments other than just to laugh at me from the corner over there. I appreciate that. Okay. Um, public comments. There's a lot of people in this room for such a short quick Yeah. A lot of people who fans of dirt and mulch and plants. Got it. So, I think that's great. I think it's a great use of uh the property over there. So, thank you very much for being here.

Okay. Uh I um thank you very much for this and I will call this meeting adjourned at probably the fastest