City Council - workshop

All right. Okay. Mr. VanWay. Mr. VanWay. Let's pray again.

Okay. Yes. All this thing that you're going to be going over, are we going to get a written copy of all this eventually? I mean, you're going to do a presentation and asking us to listen to it without anything in front of us to refer to. So that can be a little difficult, especially if you're telling me she's going to be speaking kind of fast.

Well, I'm quite sure the whole I was concerned with the changes that you all proposed and everything.

We started doing it in the past to try to force them to give us some say. And when it goes to the county, when you come to us and you ask us something, we say, hey, you have to use our codes and our ordinances. A lot of the developers don't want that because we have less density than they Of course, the county will come back and say, okay, will you provide service? We will still say, no, we won't provide the service to them unless they are fed to our colts.

Right. So in order to do that, for them to want to really deal with us, we have to do something with our colts, with our density and everything. We've always tried to keep them to our density because our density is a lot less than the county's.

I just want to, rather than, let's correct it. One of the things we found out, they can't force us to provide services anymore. We used to think that, but then we went back and found out they can't force us to provide services, but what happened is if we don't provide services, they can still go to the county and then they can provide their own, do their own thing, okay, and get what they want.

Thank you. Well, to kind of answer that question, sir, well, really the city basically doesn't have very much land to control. Most of the land is yet to be developed in the city. It's basically mostly in the county. We do have some land somewhere in the city that need to be developed, that can be developed with what I call infield pretty much. Okay, but do the city control it? No. Well, we have some say so in the development because the developers have to come. When I say city control, we don't own it. So we can't control it. Okay, but we can have input on highest development through our poll

We have already, previous councilors have already looked at things like that. That's why I say we had an agreement with the county. When they come to the county, send it back to us before they make any decision on whether they're going to approve it and let us give input. That was working good up until a year or two ago. Now we don't, a lot of times, like for example, Panther Run. That's all being done. We gave no input to the living and everything, even though it's I think it's going to be hard for us to even try to annex it in because of where it's located. So I think this is going to fall o

Here's the philosophy we would choose. We stop when we're not providing the service. Well, this way, we understand it wasn't really one of those things we really wanted to do, but once we provide the service, yeah, we're going to take it in. We don't want the revenue for it, okay? So that's why we go up back and one of the things we've been doing is annexing all these things that we provide in service for. But if I stop providing service for them, I see no commitment to annexing them. That's me. I don't want to annex any of them. I would not provide services for them.

You're right. And Panther Run is, that's why I went to the presentation. I went to it and I think, wow, this could be humongous. You know, my concern when I looked at it was the fact, are you going to want us to annex this scene? I don't want to annex it. To be honest with you, I'm not sitting here. But then when I look at the rooms and everything in this location, I don't see how we can annex it. It's been well... on our service line, see? So like I say, if I'm not providing service to me, I'm not providing service, I'm not ready to pay next meeting, okay? But I want her to understand that

Well, it is We would go through the presentation without any interruptions. I think in the beginning, Mr. North said, hey, we can just stop and interrupt and ask questions at any point during the presentation. I think that's what I heard. But that's one of the reasons I've always said I like to go through things without interrupting because then you get into these type of discussions. I'll jot down the question and ask them an opinion.

So I'm going to ask you to hold that question and answer that, and then let's go ahead and get through this presentation.

Mr. Noor, back to your question, I guess. Mr. Wall.

And remember, they went back and amended for live local a couple years ago, and now those three commercial misuse, no, it's basically any property basically on that.

And here's the thing, and it was all my understanding at the time, it applied to the highest density code you had in the city, regardless of the commercial or residential. Matter of fact, we went back to try to combat it. We went back and we changed ours, which is the downtown was at 25 per acre. We went back and changed ours to 15 per acre to try to combat the local. It didn't work for us, really. Okay. So, because we changed it after the live local came in. Well, I guess it didn't work for that one project because we changed it and they had already started paperwork on the one project, so th

The key word you used in there, starting from scratch. That would be great if we would start from scratch. I understand the concept and I totally agree with that, but the problem we have here in Claremont, because all this development had gone on, we didn't develop on that philosophy. So how do you go back and Where do you go back and say you're going to put a town set here that this quadrant and everybody here be able to walk to a benefit from? You just change the rights.

Traffic isn't flowing as smooth as you think out there. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's not flowing as smooth as you think. You go to somewhere, especially around the Winn-Dixie Plaza. We've got a real serious problem along Winn-Dixie or what's that, Bloxham and Armourn Boulevard. There's a serious problem out there. They need to drop over on the other side of Bloxham.

And I hear what you're saying. My question to that is the fact that, go back to how much land do we control, how much property do we control in this city? Where do you have the land to be able to put industrial and commercial that will attract that kind of employment?

But that's part of the answer there. The other thing is a lot of the jobs, the people I talk to going out, it's more in industry, other type of industry. So do we have the capability to provide that? the kind of job opportunities here.

And I think one of the big concerns, of course, one of the concerns that I always had is what can we do, a job opportunity to bring the people back, bring our people back here, and to keep the people off the road, work right here in the area, the work and play areas. That, to me, is the biggest thing we need to be looking at in trying to figure out that piece of the puzzle.

Yeah, you're right. And as I think I said before, you're right about the medical industry. That is one of the better paying industries right now. And so, yeah, I got crucified. But when we, as he said, when we bought Advent Health in here, a lot of people didn't like it. But I saw his job opportunity. That's one of the things I look at all the time. And one of the things I'm really so thrilled about or nervous about all the commercial down there and the job opportunities that it's supposed to be bringing, especially in the medical area. When I heard they got 175,000 square feet of medical buil

And I agree with the town centers and everything, and I think she mentioned in her presentation is the fact that Claremont was originally built on that philosophy. Right out there in the same area that we're talking about, Winn-Dixon and everything, we had our little town centers and everything when I grew up here. We changed our codes, our ordinance, and got away from that. We took out our little stores and mom-and-pop stores and everything in the community. That's right. Yes, we used to have mom-and-pop stores in the community. And that's what I've been saying all along. Most cities in the c

Well, there was one concern I had in our presentation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I heard you say parking to one, change it to one per unit.

No, I thought I heard you say, and of course, some of the units, Diagram you showed one unit.

Yeah, that just concerned me when you start talking about one, Nine times out of 10 these days, you know, most homes gonna have five and six cars, so where the rest are parking? On the streets and clogging up our streets and everything, see? Which is one of the other things I say to people all the time back in my day. I mean, I'm from a family of 12, mother, father, 14 of us in the house, but we only had one car to get around, okay? Now today, in my house today, I got four or five, and we got five cars. So, so, so... Parking is one of the things I really want to, I hope we really address in th

Yeah. But other than that, anybody else have anything else before we we move on? Because we do have the downtown activation. Ma'am, but I know you, what is it? It's about two o'clock in the morning or so over there where you are.

Well, thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Anybody need a break? Anybody need a break? Anybody need a break? Brian, you need a break?

Sounds good, have a good night. No, I'm just saying. Okay.

The downtown activity plan. Who's handling this one? Oh, you're handling that too? Okay. This is the last thing on the agenda, right? Yes, sir.

Before you start, let me just throw this out there. Mr. Wayne, we've got to do something about putting the screen up here so we don't have to be turning around. All right. Thank you. Let's go. Put it right on that, sir. No, I'm talking about when you sit up here. I know they had the TV taken out because it was all weird.

Well, I don't know if you're looking at it. Maybe it'd be, I'm going to just throw this idea at you. Look at Center Lake a little bit more because one of the problems we used to have with Center Lake was flooding all the time. Yes. Okay. And that's why we somewhat did what we did, not do a catch basin. Yes.

Well, it used to flood on a regular basis during the rainy season before we did all this work. Okay. So it used to be much more regular. Oh yeah, it used to flood a lot before we put in all the drainage and everything about it.

No, the only other area I worry about flooding, I've seen a lot of flooding, is Emerald Lake over here. Right outside of Clemont, the one outside of Groland, and Mobile Home Park over there now. That still has a lot of flooding problems. and they'll go to the two main areas.

A long time ago, you used to actually have buildings, like I think one old police station used to actually sit out over the water.

Remember, that's not a street. That used to be, actually, a building used to sit in there. Yeah. And, of course, you had the other one that was an alleyway from that. Yeah. Well, alleys function best when you can pull all the way through. Well, you can pull in and go ahead and make a street all the way through to the alley.

Well, I think the church has its own ideas over there on the scene as well.

I'm not going to fly on Route 50. No, it's not. Anyways, keep on going.

Nathan, you're exactly right on that because what people don't realize and what one of the biggest driving factors was that East Avenue where it turns off and the boat ramp is at. Actually, you used to be able to continue right around. There used to be a lake road that ran all along the lakefront. It ran all along the lakefront years ago when growing up here, when you're coming out of Minneapolis, instead of going up East Avenue, you could go up East Avenue, but the road had continued all the way around lakefront, and it dumped out, it ended over here on 8th Street, but you had access to 5th, And the train track ran through there as well. Oh, okay.

Yeah, all that ran through there. But so when, going back to what Nathan was saying, when they sold off that and closed off that road and started selling it, trying to sell off their property for redevelopment, basically that destroyed a lot of, well, that's what killed the downtown because nobody knew it existed anymore because you never had any traffic. You'd come around East Avenue, you'd come back to Highway 50, you knew that downtown didn't even know it existed anymore. So that's why it was a ghost town back here in the early... in 2010, 2012, it was like a ghost town, and that's why we m

Can we get an answer to Mr. Bain? I think I asked that question at the beginning. I think Mr. North said we would be getting something later on down the line. I don't know. But I agree with him, and that's one of the reasons I asked the question. Will we have something physically in writing to be able to sit down and look at so we have time to study? But Mr. Bain, he's more specific and everything. Yeah, we're going to need a lot more time to digest this and go through all these stuff. Yeah. And that's why I pretty much, when I came in here, sitting here at this presentation, we have nothing t

So on the 13th, what would you be expecting from the council on the 13th?

So you're talking about on the 13th, we get it. We have two weeks to look at what we're talking about going to PNZ in the week for the 6th. And then on the 13th, we're doing transmittal. yet still we transmit before we really have anything back from the public input on the comprehensive plan.

All right. Any other, no other questions? I can't understand. Brain overload, brain overload. Nothing else needs to come before the council, the board, I guess.