Remarks by Jonathan Mitchell
189 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 8
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“Good evening and welcome to the October 6th, 2026 meeting of the Planning Commission. Planning Commission is a volunteer citizen advisory body. We don't make decisions that bind the town. We advise the council on matters of orderly growth and development. Per our normal procedure, I'm going to do roll call, see who's here. Liz losses Jeff Jeff Green here Chuck Mills here Libby Thomas And Mike is a bae couldn't be with us tonight out of town. I'm John Mitchell the chair Our agenda for tonight is fairly streamlined we have a few sets of minutes that we are going to approve or modify as a…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Jeff? Yes. Chuck? Yes. Libby? Abstain is a yes, and I'm a yes. So now I'll turn it over to Tess.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Thanks, Taz. Do you all want to go to public comment first before we enter more questions and discussion? OK. Do any of the members of the public who are here wish to make any comments? If you do, you can step right up to the microphone, but you're not required to.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“On this subject, yes. OK. If you change your mind in the next minute or so, feel free to step up if you're thinking about it.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“All right. With that, let me bring it back to Planning Commission questions or comments. And just as a reminder, the plan that we discussed at our last meeting was to use this meeting to... discuss amongst ourselves what sorts of feedback we might have a majority on board with, and then use the time between this meeting and October 20 for assigned people to write up certain sections. And then we can come back on the 20th and do any final fine tuning of the language and vote on it. So floor is open.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Yeah, so why don't we try to establish some categories that are of interest that the PC as a whole might want to comment on. I mean, if they're... very technical comments, it could be appropriate for us to vote on. So I'm open to that.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Yeah, so So so far we have I think three categories in the subcategory under housing so trees stormwater housing and then the four unit Density stuff is I think under housing There any interest in revisiting by right I saw that a lot of comments I”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“I mean, I think that just being submitted from the public the expansion We can of course add more And maybe enforcement I'm curious how I”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“OK. So I'm going to arbitrarily propose an order that we start with housing, and then we go to trees, stormwater, by right thresholds, and then enforcement. Is that OK?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“All right. So let's start with housing, including the four-unit stuff. Do you want to start, Jeff?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Hey Jeff, can I just clarify something? Just the facts that we're all following you. Floor area ratio is what you're talking?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Okay, I just want to wrap my head around that. So could you just give us a quick background on what the proposed rules would do?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Taz, I'm wondering if you can shed some light on how those 5,000 to 6,000 square foot limitations were arrived at. I mean, it was obviously some sort of balancing or trade-off analysis that was done. Could you shed some light on that?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“So we were trying to level playing field out a little bit more So as I understand it there's two rationales one is neighborhood compatibility with some concern about students, but I think that Concern probably goes a bit beyond students Right right, I'm just trying to get on the table what the rationale was originally and and then the second is is affordability on the theory that a smaller unit, all else equal, would be more cheaper to file.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Jeff, I wonder what you think about the affordability argument.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Jeff, I'll say that I'm open to your suggestions and what you draft up on this.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“But direct staff after this LUMO process?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“We can do that next time. Okay. Sir, did you wanna make a public comment? Yes, that's what I'm here for today. Okay, I'm gonna open it up one more time for public comment, and this is gonna be the last time, so anybody who wants to speak, we would love to hear from you. Go ahead, sir.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Yeah, we'll send it. Yeah, we would. We'll send it around. We can scan it. Is it okay if we keep it? Yes.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Thank you. Thank you for coming. Any other comments from the public? OK. So let's bring it back to the BC. If anybody wants to respond, you're free to. If we want to move on to the next thing, we can.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Do you want to kick that off? No. Okay. I'm happy to.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 49:51
“Okay, so first of all, I want to echo Liz's thanks to TAS for being responsive to, maybe it wasn't just our prior feedback, probably others, but I looked at the map, and in fact, would it be possible to put it up, the map of the What's the sidewalk collectors plus the arterials plus quarter mile from a greenway?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Okay, so the blue circles are school zones as quarter mile from school, correct?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“The red lines are streets that are quarter mile from, insofar as the streets are a quarter mile from a greenway entrance. Then the, I can't tell the color, the blue lines are arterials.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
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“Right. Okay, so... My concern, my prior concern about collectors is largely resolved. I mean, it's resolved enough that I wouldn't pursue it further. I think the sidewalk collectors make sense as having higher density. And I just don't have any objection to what remains there in green. The arterials, in my personal view, are always fine. Those strike me as actual fairly high traffic roads around town. I don't know how many people are going to want to live on them in these units, but if they do, that's no objection here. I do have some concerns about the Greenway entrance criterion and the…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026