Remarks by Rob Dorans
63 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 3
- Play at 1:39:15
“Adopted. Thank you. Next move to Amanda Smith of the Clerk. Clerk, please call the roll.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:39:24
“Accepted. Thank you. I finally move for passage as amended. Second. Clerk, please call the roll.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 0:00
“Being here, today is lucky number 22 of our 60 day public comment period that runs through October 24th. So we're right in the middle of it and we've got still 38 more days for residents to share their feedback on the second phase of zone in between the administration and council. And I know we've had a number of folks in the room have already taken the survey and I think about a number of events. We will talk more about the engagement both here tonight, but also engagement into the future, just to make sure that folks have every opportunity to weigh in on what we have before us here. We'll…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 12:06
“I also just want to acknowledge we had a number of events at the gallery that were postponed and that is because literally air conditioning went out in the conference room and with the heat spell we've had we did not think it was a great idea to put folks in a room that was 95 plus degrees so those events are going to be rescheduled so folks will still have every opportunity again if they want to go individually with a planner or go on a night with a council member we just wanted to be safe and not literally 90 degrees and a sweat box with folks as exciting as zoning is I thought that was…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 49:58
“Janet, who said that zoning districts can't be fun on a Wednesday night? Thank you both for going through those. And again, I think it's important when we talk about folks understand the substance of these things, right? So again, I appreciate everyone bearing with us, because the goal here is to make sure that if you hear something here tonight that stirs a question, that you ask that question and get that answered. What we're trying to do is simplify a zoning code that, again, goes back 70 years, and there's been lots and lots of Band-Aids over the years. We're trying to start fresh and…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 52:41
“Again, if I'm in the audience, I'm trying to interpret exactly what that means. You say we're almost getting both right, because the setback itself is operating as an open space, but also the setback is pushing whatever that use may or may not be further away from potentially the residential areas around. So you're still accomplishing the goal of having that open space, but also with that setback, again, you're pushing those uses further away. Is that a fair assessment?”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 53:08
“And Shannon, I think you talked about this when we talk about sort of Class A office space. One, can we say what that is? Because some folks may not know what that means. But also, when we talk about different encouraging different uses within Columbus about when we talk about a focus on economic development, talk about commercial and industrial. Why does something like that matter for a city like Columbus? When we talk about land use is land use, but also at the same time, we're also trying to encourage or discourage certain things from happening in certain places. And I think when we talk…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 55:55
“And again, just to emphasize the point, for a city whose primary form of revenue is income tax, we obviously want to encourage there to be jobs not only for our residents to earn a living at, but also to make sure that we're able to gather that income tax, make sure we're able to pay for things like Picking up the trash and the recycling and paving the roads. One thing I want to ask about, and we'll talk about residential here in a second. We've talked a lot about industrial and sort of manufacturing and commercial here tonight. That's I think one of the biggest differences in this phase as…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:01:54
“Turning back to housing, I'm going to ask one last question, then I know Councilman Ross has a question before we go to public comment. So I think, Louis, you mentioned this very briefly, but again, I know we've talked a lot about the economic development side of things from zoning, but I don't want us to get lost in the need for housing in Columbus and what this code means. So in phase one, we talked about, we had experts that looked at the proposed changes. We were very excited to say we went from, potentially 6,000 new housing units on those properties. And with the rezoning that we went…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:03:28
“that's so significant when we talk about just the supply and demand of what additional units coming along means for just housing costs for folks in Columbus. And as I started the public hearing talking about, we're already seeing the impact of phase one with just new housing units coming along, helping to stabilize those costs and in some cases start to lower them. That is just a massive opportunity where we've seen other cities across the country, whether or not it's Austin or Minneapolis, similar zoning efforts to modernize. They've seen also housing costs begin to stabilize and in some…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:07:12
“I think it's such an excellent point because right now what we have is sort of a system, whether or not we're talking about the capital budget or otherwise, that's sort of driven by development, by what people have decided to propose. Versus the inverse of this is where the city is saying, here's what we would like to see generally in these places. rather than letting you folks in development community, I think, drive that bus. It's more of the city now and the residents being able to say, no, we think these are generally the things that are acceptable within these areas. Here's what we would…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:12:58
“thank you for listening thank you for all the tremendous amount of work you have done i appreciate your time thank you miss link um i think one thing you and i agree crystal clear honestly but love the city and wanted to thrive and have i think a better set of rules moving forward because i think the frustration that i have that i know you also have had is when we get into i think individual project by projects negotiations about think the inequities that that come out because I think as Councilman Ross's question around this is that we have not had a lot of central land use planning across…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:16:57
“I make just sort of on this topic I think generally is that just to sort of level set a little bit about the difference between like sort of land use and I think a lot of other topics that are associated with with heavy industrial or other types of things right so you know zoning is all about like what can go there it doesn't ask questions over water consumption or electricity consumption. I think on this particular topic, Council Member Weitsch, one of my colleagues, is really leaning in about what is the city's investment responsibility as far as if companies are gonna locate certain types…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:19:35
“So under the current code, and I'll let Louis comment, and again, just to let folks know, if we have a little bit of a back and forth, I'm going to need folks to come back to the microphone because this is getting streamed. All good. So I think just to repeat the question was just about sort of in the industrial category, are there additional restrictions in the place? And to be very clear, most, I think on this particular topic, most of the data centers are not within the city of Columbus. There is one data center campus that's on southwest, what? South High Street, I'm sort of across from…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:21:14
“Moving on to our next public speaker, Annalisa Rocha. Welcome back to council, and you're bouncing between city hall and over here, so thanks for joining us.”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:24:50
“Thank you. Louis Shannon, I don't know if you have any comments.”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:25:14
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:27:33
“Which, again, I think is also a point about when we talk about modernizing the code to that point, Shannon, is that under 33 and M, they can go, right? There's no thought process around this because literally anything can go there.”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:27:50
“So allow me to repeat that. Our current code allows, regulates things like basket weaving, but not things that power the economy in the 21st century. So we talk about things being 70 years old. Here we are. Hopefully everyone's enjoying my stand-up comedy tonight. Our next speaker is Anete Canseco. Canseco. Thank you. I was like, I am going to get 60% of the way there, so thank you for being kind.”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:32:07
“Thank you very much for those comments. I know I could see Lewis shaking his head a little bit, so I think we got a couple of actionable things and I'm going to make sure that we follow up with the team about.”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:32:27
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:39:37
“Thank you, Kathy. I appreciate it. I did want to ask one follow-up question to the team on this particular point. So currently, if a property is annexed into the city, and again, this is a little bit different because when an annexation happens, it's currently under Title 33, not Title 34, which you heard talking about here tonight. So could you just lay out like sort of how that currently works, which I would assume is sort of how we would probably approach this in Title 34, because I think Kathy's point about, as I said earlier, I'm interested in seeing generally where in the areas that are…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:41:54
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:45:26
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 16, 2026
- Play at 1:49:02
“And one, I appreciate the engagement of the society, both during phase one and now. The historic preservation modernization effort obviously came out of phase one. I think that was a question that was asked by many residents in German Village of, hey, we're talking about this significant change in zoning. What about preservation? To be very candid, we didn't have a good answer, which is why we're going down that pathway, I think, now. One in which I don't think any of us should presuppose what the answer should be because I think it should be a lot of engagement both with residents and also…”
City Council · Sep 16, 2026