Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, it's now 6 PM on the uh 23rd of February, 2026, and I call this meeting of the planning commission to order. I have a roll call. David Do here. Dean Havoc, present. Nicholas Andrews here. Matthew Filer here. Justin Henderson here. John Lena Lionus here. Lindsay Haga

here. Okay. So, um this is our organizational meeting. So, before we get on to any old or new business, which was really just our uh proposed amendments for new business, um we need to move into election of officers. So, Christian, if I'm turning the explainment process here,

certainly. Uh in essence, the chair and vice chair are elected by the members of the board commission in this case. um in the uh initial election because the chair is no longer the chair, I will handle the election and then the new chair or if it's the same chair um will handle the election and the vice chair. Each uh position can be held for a term of one year and each person who holds that position can hold it twice in a row. So uh anybody on the board uh who's a full-time member is eligible to sit as chair and vice chair. So you guys are welcome to nominate whoever you want. The nominee doesn't have to accept it. um you're all here so we can't nominate anybody who's not here unfortunately but um so uh if you just want to go ahead um I can start the election. Um I will take nominations for the position of chair.

Um I nominate our current chair. There any other nominations? Do you accept the nomination? Uh yeah. All right. Can I have a vote? Voice vote. All those in favor? I I I opposed. Nick is our chair once again. Well, thanks folks. I guess we're going to move then to nomination for uh vice chair for the next year.

Nominee Justin. Are there any other nominations? Mr. Chair, I did understand who was nominated. Uh, the current vice chair, Justin.

All right. Could I have a voice vote? All in favor? I, please. I I Any opposed? Congratulations, Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you, sir. All right. Um, so we do not have any minutes to approve. Um, and do we have any old business? No old business. All right. Move on to new business.

We have, uh, for your consideration. Um, in the last year or just under, uh, we've been working under the bylaws, which is a new, uh, process for the board commission. Um, obviously there were going to be some things that worked, some things that might need to be tweaked. Simultaneous, we also uh had our city clerk retire and now we have a new city clerk. Um, we've been kind of going through the last year and looking at how things have worked out and uh we had some suggestions. So, we've brought those to you as amendments to the bylaws. Um, none of them are major structural changes. It's really more processoriented, but um I'll just kind of go through them. They are again suggestions by staff. you guys are the keepers of the bylaws. So, you would basically vote on these items. Uh when we get to the end, we can do them as a whole or you can do them individually. Um but uh first and foremost, um I guess the uh there was not a set um time when uh new members appointed to any other commissions or boards would be sworn in. Um there was sort of an ad hoc process where staff at the planning department would do training for commissioners prior to their being sworn in. But uh in an attempt to bring everything more in line with how city council does everything, basically the first meeting after uh the appointment, which is typically in December, um the new appointees would show up to that meeting and be sworn in. So there wouldn't be any delay or kind of uh gray area of when that would happen. So the expectation is if you're appointed, you'll come to the first meeting and be sworn in. Obviously, if there is a conflict, you would address that with the clerk's office, but that's sort of going to be the standard going forward. And again, most of these are to try and make the process the same as council. And we're doing the same thing with board of adjustment and the other boards to make it all one simpler for us, but two, so the public kind of knows the routine. There's nothing uh unique about each board.

Um, so sorry, theoretically on the their first regular scheduled meeting after their appointment, theoretically if they can't make the appointment like the next on the list, they wouldn't get appointed until the next what would be the next push the appointment back. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. The intent is that you know as soon as they're able to be appointed they would be appointed if there's conflict come let's office know okay

that the role of the sort of swearing in officiating and all that is the clerk's office but obviously we have the clerk's office staff here as well so but you would coordinate that with them and then um obviously staff on the planning side handles the orientation and training so we're just going to bifrocate those two things because they don't necessarily directly relate to each Uh the second item is the uh organizational meeting date and the election of officers. Uh hadn't even occurred to me when I was doing the bylaws, but um previous code just said that basically you guys would have an organizational meeting. under the new code, we thought it was a good idea to let you guys pick when that meeting would be because we'd had a situation in the past where the meeting was pushed and pushed and pushed to like March or something. So, um, when I talked to the clerk about this, she noticed that one, the code and the bylaws state that the term for chair and vice chair is one year, but since that meeting wasn't a set time, that one year could be a year and six months or eight months. Um, plus knowing when we have that meeting makes it easier for them to make sure we have staff um because they can plan their vacations around it and stuff like that. So, our recommendation is to make the uh organizational meeting be the first meeting in February. That way, it's not right after the holidays and the terms for chair and vice chair would just run to and from the organizational meeting. So, like tonight would be your election. Obviously, it would run to the next. In this case, you there'd be a two-eek period where you wouldn't, you know, be a full year, but considering that's, you know, bringing us into alignment, uh, I just think it would make it easier and, uh, for us and then again, it's the public will know obviously for those that care, uh, when that meeting will be and can attend if they like.

Yeah, I think this actually number two makes a ton of sense. Uh, unless anybody has any comments on it. Do we need a motion on the floor to discuss in this context or can we No, this isn't any thing legislative. It's just process for you guys. So, cool. I mean, we'll vote at the end for the amendments. But yeah, if you have questions, just jump in.

Uh, the only question I have is just the strictness of the language and if we need to like move the meeting or something like that. Um I just I'm not sure exactly how we would handle but it does say like at the February annual organization meeting and then the first amendment the first one uh of appointment of new positions. That one makes sense to me because at the next scheduled meeting, um, but if we for whatever reason have to forego a February meeting, the language should probably be flexible enough to allow us to do that with a vote or something. Like February or the next scheduled meeting. Yeah.

Immediately follow. That's a good point. Yeah. Um, Um, that would probably affect the potentially affect the expiration, too. I don't know if we need to get into that, but I would just imagine that it's either the first meeting in February or the second meeting in February. February is a short month, so it could go into March, but since February is a short month,

some general language, you know, it will generally be the first meeting in February, but kind of maybe set some, you know, parameters like if there is a reason the meeting isn't held or something along those lines, but um yeah, I'll I'll uh we can make that more flexible. I'll I'll talk to the attorney on the best wording for that. Yeah, the goal would be to have it set for that, you know, meeting, but if we have to move it, obviously there would be a procedure for that. So,

yeah, let me not try to to wordsmith it here, but I'm sure it opens a small can of words. I think it's a good idea to have a set process that has room for flex, but it should have expectations of arrival when you're appointed and when it's time to be trained and when it's time to be sworn in. And if you can't make it, hey, we've all been there. Then you do it another time and you you say that somewhere in the in the document so that there's room for that. But that's all you need. Pretty simple. Yeah, basically there's just something in there that says, "Hey, we can at the whatever meeting needs to be, you know, a month out, two months out, whatever, we can say, "Hey, this we can put it on the schedule. If everybody can't be there, maybe we can push it two weeks, you know, no big deal."

I think the only the only person who might care is like the chair with and vice chair with their terms of a year. Is it 11 months? Is it 10 months? If we have to kick it back to April, I personally don't care. Does not care. the current I imagine y'all don't care. That's it. It it doesn't make any difference to me. Obviously, I cannot speak for future chairs or anything. Um my only caution here or my only concern is that um I don't want to make it too flexible, right? I really like the hey, you're going to have your organizational meeting in February, right? And it's nice to have

that's the right that's the right way. uh and maybe some general language after that to say if that is there's other reasons you you might not have it here. What if we have some sort of huge snow thing or something? I mean there's it can't it's not just because it might be canceled or scheduling or anything like that. So um I get the need for putting some language in there so that we don't get sideways if you will. I just don't want to make it too open-ended. Yeah. And my point is just I don't think we should extend the term out to align then with if we have to kick it back. It's not exactly one year. It's still February. And if the term gets shortened, then the term gets shortened and that's just what it is. Well, I mean I'm only I'm only staring at like 11 months and two weeks at this point. So,

but who's counting, right? Who's counting?

I think I've got the gist of it. And then we've got other, you know, uh, codes and processes that deal with other types of meetings. I'm sure we have some standard language somewhere in what we've already got. So that's pretty straightforward. Uh, and then the last one, um, although probably minor and you guys wouldn't even notice, um, there's a elements of our agenda that are traced back to some operating guidelines that were passed in like 2018 that were not directly aligned with how council was doing things. And, uh, particularly for the clerk's office, it makes it a little bit more complicated in our online system, like having to go in and put everybody's name in instead of just saying roll call. um because as they change out they're like pre-programmed text that you basically pull out of a dropown menu. So there's a lot of going back and fixing things and um it we don't do that for council. We just have roll call and then the clerk's office calls everybody's name. So things like that we're just going to tweak to match how council does it. That way it's simpler in our system and again it's for the public. It's the exact same agenda just says planning commission instead of council. I think that's everything. Yeah. So, those are our those are our recommendations. Um, just kind of go through them real quick again. Um, so we would uh have the swearing in as soon as possible after appointment and we'll do orientation as available but not have those be linked together. Um the annual organizational meeting will generally be the first meeting in February each year. Uh and the terms for chair and vice chair will generally adhere to that. We'll put in some uh relief valve mechanism that makes sense to make that a little bit more flexible and then we'll amend the agenda to match how council does it. So those are our general recommendations. There's a

strike through and underline version in the code or in the attachments. Obviously, we'll have to uh tweak that a little bit. Um if you guys are generally okay with it, we can certainly bring it back for a vote if you'd rather or we can make the amendments and then if you decide you don't like them, we can bring it back up. The we don't have to amend the bylaws strictly at the annual organizational meeting. We're just it made sense to do it now. But, uh whatever you're comfortable with. If you want to approve them in concept or you want us to come back with a revised draft, we can do that.

So, I don't want to um my thought on this is I don't want to go another like week and a half, you know, or two weeks of looking at something, changing a couple of words or whatever. That said, I don't al also don't want to approve something we haven't read. Um, but uh we have a um we have a process in place to change some something if we disagree with it. Correct.

Yeah. you guys can I think I've heard we have some slight concern with his non agenda item two which was the uh the language around the organizational meeting being in February. So how how what is the council comfortable or the commission comfortable with proceeding with right here? Do we want are we thinking we and since we have general agreement on all of them we should move forward this come back for a vote? How how do we want to go? I don't know that there's going to be any language we could possibly put in there that's gonna come back to bite us. Agree with that. I mean, I can get pretty creative, but I think I can write stuff that's pretty

I mean, as long as all the board I I mean, I think it's fine. I think it's fine in the spirit of what we discussed as long as that's reflected. I mean, even if the language is as is, I think that's what we would do naturally anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, if we're all in agreement, then let's go ahead and um have a uh vote on adoption of these uh changes as written uh with the note of adding some language to increase some flexibility for the organizational meeting on in February.

I recommend approval using the second language we just went through. Sorry to catch off. Second. Roll call, please. David Doll, Dean Haddock, yes. Matthew Filer, yes. Justin Henderson, yes. John Lionus, yes. Lindsay Haga, yes. Nicholas Andrew, yes.

All right. And I will of course bring you guys a final version to look at. So if you do find some thing to tweak, we can certainly do it again. Uh and the last two things, um we do not have a meeting uh the next meeting in March. We don't have any action items for that. Uh I did get confirmation that the city attorney will be available to do the uh requested consultation on um tobacco sales and regulations. So can you just uh summarize that because I think we have members here that were not here for that discussion, please.

Um so that's my ability. Basically, the planning commission was curious what their role would be in the regulation of uh tobacco sales, how that works with uh various state regulations. In essence, what their leeway is to approve and disapprove things and how that would would work. So, um he's going to he basically said he would go and look at other cities and other, you know, case law, state statutes, and come back and give you guys basically a presentation and a question and answer on where you would fit into that process. And that's that would be scheduled here at our six o'clock meeting on it'll be the March 23rd meeting. It's the only item that we have. So it just be for you guys.

And some additional context on that is just the influx of uh vape stores and smoke shops that have been open recently and we just recently approved a uh a medical dispensary facility. And so we just all want to know what is within our purview and what we don't have control over. All right, that's all the planning department had. Unless there's any questions. Are there any questions for the planning department? All right. Is there anything else the commissioner would like to discuss right now? All right. If not, can I have a motion to adjurnn? So moved. We are adjourned.