Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, I'll call the uh January 20th meeting to order. Daisy, can you confirm that the Kansas Open Meeting Act required notice has been properly provided? Yes, I can confirm that the packet was posted and the required notice was provided. Okay, thank you, Daisy. Roll call, please. Commissioner Rogers, here. Commissioner McFaden here. Commissioner Mel here. Commissioner Farber here. Commissioner Alt here. Commissioner Vanc here. Commissioner Sidowl here. And Chair Waters here. So with eight out of eight members, we have quorum and we can proceed with business.

Right. Okay. Um I would entertain an a motion to approve the minutes or if there are any corrections, please let us know those as now. I'd make that motion. Second. It's been moved and second to approve the minutes of the January 6th meeting. All those in favor say I. I.

Motion carries. All right. Moving into new business. Um it looks like there is none. So we'll move into the administrative items. Thank you, chair and commissioners. Uh tonight we have our 2025 annual report. Uh so in the attachment in your packet we have our memo and three exhibits that show or the number of cases and the attendance record and the information for all of the commissioners on the board last year. So I'll go through a few of the highlights of the memo, but I won't go through every every little piece. But you do have that in your packet and it's available if you want to go into the some of the details. Uh last year we I'll go through the some of the major accomplishments here. We did as far as comprehensive plan implementation. We did do our annual review of that. And um then as far as continuing education activities, we did hold some study sessions on on some of the board training that we do annually. Planning staff attended the Kansas Planning Conference in Manhattan and National Planning Conference in Denver last year. As far as review of the development applications that the board did last year, you reviewed 20 land uh 20 land use related applications in 2025, including comprehensive plan amendments, zoning map changes, zoning text amendments, PDDs, conditional use permits, final site plans, and subdivision plat. Uh that compares with 35 cases heard in 2024 and 48 cases heard in 2023, 41 cases heard in 2022 and 44 cases heard in 2021. Um and there's a in the bullets below that on the actual memo there's each of those in a lot more detail that you could read through. As far as member information, uh membership currently is

at eight members. So, we have Doug Alt, Chad Farber, Dan McFadden, Patrick Mel, Justin Rogers, Tom Sidowl, Greg Vanc, and Carlo Waters. Uh, Dan McFaden was appointed to the commission in August of 2025. Full membership of the planning commission is nine appointed members, and the planning commission currently only has eight appointed members. Uh, one outside representative needs to be appointed to fill the vacant position and bring the commission's membership to nine. We currently don't have a youth representative on the on the board. Uh Carla Waters serves as chair of the commission and Chad Farber is the vice chair. Patrick Mel serves as the commission's representative on the board of zoning appeals and Carla Waters serves as the commission's representative on the heritage commission. And in the exhibits, we do have the attachments that show your attendance records and address and everything. So, you do want to take a look at those, see if there's any corrections that staff needs to make before we um send that on to city commission. So, go ahead and take a look at that as we move through that and just let us know if there's any changes that we need to make. Uh, as far as planning staff or our staff information, Dean Andrew retired from his position in June and myself and planning staff continue to provide um staff support to the commission, including administering the presentation of applications at the meetings. Their duties or our duties include accepting applications, coordinating legal notice, preparing and presenting staff reports, and compiling meeting minutes. Um, so it's myself, Dustin Hers, and Gage Roberts that currently make up planning staff. And we have Daisy who's our development coordinator to um provide administrative support for the um for the planning commission. And Lauren Driscoll is the director of community and development services and Margie Clam is the deputy director as well. And as far as 2026

goals, staff and the planning commission goals include some long-range planning items which include uh conduct a review of the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance and continue to focus on opportunities for gateway and entryway enhancements. Identify suitable areas for construction of additional housing to meet the housing needs of the community. And then as far as zoning administration goals, we are going to work, our staff's going to work to prepare an RFP for a comprehensive plan update and overall zoning code rewrite or update. And by being involved in the conversations and and we're starting to we're going to start working on some of those early steps um as we work through the RFP process, which include things like going through the code, taking a look at things that need to change or might be need to be cleaned up and and those sort of things. Uh we're going to we have a a 2018 through 2023 flood plane audit that we're that we're u looking at and got to get a few more pieces cleaned up with that to finish that off. And then complete updates to the city's alcohol codes that provide for the common consumption areas that we implemented. Uh there's a few more remaining small text amendments that we'll we'll need to work through the process and and do that to really button that up and get it all finalized. And as far as that goes, uh we'll go into some of the cases here. It was I think Justin's going to pull that up on the screen, but we did five conditional use permit applications, two two zoning map amendments, two zoning text amendments, the one uh subdivision regulation amendment, one PDD, one PDD amendment, uh two final site development plans, four final plats or replplats, and the annual review of the

comprehensive plan and review of CIP. So, it's a total of 20 cases. And then exhibit B is our attendance record. So, you can go ahead and take a look at that and see if that all looks correct for each of you. And exhibit C is the membership roster. And so, again, take a look at the address, make sure that that's correct and spelling and everything on there. And with that, staff's available for questions and corrections or anything you might have. Okay. Thank you, Dustin. Are there any questions for staff?

Dustin, uh, we've had less applications this year than or in 25 than we have in the past. Is that due to the number of building projects or because you're doing more of the the implementation of the u uh permits and things in house? I don't know the answer to that exactly. I I mean nothing that we know of that is really influencing it. I'll leave it if you know of anything Dustin that I don't think as far as a trend though there's really anything that one thing that you could point to.

Yeah, I don't know that there's any specific thing. I do know that subdivision plat tend to run in cycles. we we'll see, you know, a handful or so um kind of come through at the same time and then as those get built out, we may not see any for a while and then we see another handful. So there are certain kinds of cases that kind of cohort together and you do see a pattern of that over time like I'm talking over period of years, right? Longer longer term. Um but in terms of like resonings, conditional use permits, things like that. Um one thing that we did change is we used to do a fair number of conditional use permits for daycarees, which we don't anymore. So that that's probably a handful that we used to see on an annual basis that we're not seeing now. Um, so I think the conditional use permits being down and then um not having any any major resonings and then only having a few final site development plans. Uh, yeah, I I don't know that 20 is it is on the smaller side in terms of the number of cases that that the planning commission reviewed. But I will also say like 21, 22, 23, 24 like we did a lot. So that that's part of it too is that we're comparing the 20 cases we did last year to the you know 40 cases we did in those those years which is which is a lot.

And some of some of that also would likely come from COVID only doing 10 cases in 2020. So you might have a you know a higher amount than usual for those those uh years right after. So,

it may not really be that we're a lot lower. It's just that there was a lot more coming in after COVID and like Dustin said, there was um more sub more plats that went through and so now a lot of those are getting built out. We've got a lot of plats um recorded and and stuff that were in the final pieces. So, now maybe those are being developed and and there's work going on, but not so much at the stage where they're coming in here. Yeah, thank you. So, so would you think that's a trend or is it an anomaly? Do we think that 20 cases is what we'll see in 26? That's kind of where I was leading.

Yeah. Um I mean I it's that that kind of stuff is always really hard to tell. Like I I can never predict um you know what what it's going to look like coming down the road. I I think 20 is probably what we'll see. Um or somewhere along those lines again because you don't conditional use permits are one of those things that you we have over the last 5 years seen more of and that's because of the the daycarees and the tattoo parlors and the vape shops. But I I sense that the the vape shops and the tattoo parlors maybe have hit a saturation where we may not see a lot more of those. Um that's hard to say, but I think we haven't seen a lot of those. Like I don't know if we did any of those in 20, but I know like in 24 and 23 we were seeing some of those and we didn't last year. So um those types of things maybe impact, you know, what we may see in the future as well. We and we've we've seen we know that there are at least likely to be a few plats coming. We know of a few potential reasonzoning cases that might be coming up, but they're all early talking through what the steps are and so those are have potential to be coming in. Um there's also potential that we will do some small text amendments here and there for for things that can't really wait until the zoning code rewrite. So, we're working through lists of pieces of code that need to be cleaned up or that we'd like to clarify or, you know, um address those those little pieces on their own without waiting a couple years to finally have a rewritten zoning code. So, it's likely that you'll see a couple of those at least. Yeah.

Okay. Are there any other questions of staff? I have one quick one on your planning conferences that you attend. Um I imagine you hear speakers and go to um sessions, you know, educational or just hearing um you know, real life situations. Do you guys ever come back with something, oh, we ought to try that or

Yeah, you come back with a headful of those. I think um I mean there's a benefit in the direct you know things that we could implement but there's also kind of a benefit to seeing what what other places are doing that you can't always bring in and implement here now but sometimes it gets you gets you thinking about how to approach our own local issues that we might encounter. Um, we definitely all go to the sessions and we're kind of go on our own path unless there's something that's really pertinent to something that we're working on, you know, we might all go to one same thing. But, right,

it's kind of every everybody chooses their sessions and so there's a pretty large variety. But yes, it's all basically seeing what other places are doing with usually a um specific use case and they're presenting something. Sometimes it's a little bit more broad about a topic, but then there are a lot of those like here's how we address this this thing in this place, you know. So,

yep. for um AICP certification um which is the national planning association planning certification you have continuing education credits and those continuing education credits require um so many hours in certain topics or different areas such as ethics such as law, land use law, planning law, things like that. And so a a lot of the conferences will have sessions on those specific topics. And then you'll also see a lot of sessions where peers will talk about current projects that they're doing. And some of that's quote unquote cutting edge stuff or or changes in the industry such as um accessory dwelling units. We've talked about that with the planning commission. That's always something that that people talk about. short-term rentals, uh maybe storage containers. Solar is a big deal in Eastern Kansas, uh because they have solar farms and a lot in the more of the rural rural communities. Um so, not so much in the cities, but in kind of the the the counties around the Kansas City area or in eastern Kansas. Um and so that that's something that's kind of a hot topic right now that different jurisdictions are dealing with. And so a lot of times what happens is we kind of monitor how our colleagues are handling those situations and then they bring forward what what works well, what didn't work well and the things that do work well. That's when everybody else kind of starts implementing it. Um, but there's always kind of test cases out there and

um, fortunately we haven't had one of those in a while, but we've we've been the leader on on on things in the past. Salena has in which other people around the state kind of see what we do and then they'll they'll kind of react to that. But currently, um, you have ADUs, you have short-term rentals, you have bike programs, you have solar. Like those are some of the the topics that are going on in different communities that that we are aware of. we kind of watch um and then a as time goes on when it's appropriate, we'll probably bring forward to you to to talk more about it at some point. Okay.

All right. Thank you. All right. Um we don't need a vote or any motion on this. Correct. Do and it would be to approve the annual report with any revisions needed um to submit to the city commission. Okay. Are there does anyone have any revisions? If not, I'd entertain a motion. So move. I'd second that. It's been moved and second to approve the 2025 annual report. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. Do we have any unfinished business? No. We don't have any unfinished business. Okay. Is there anyone online, Dustin?

We do not have anyone on Zoom or in the room from the public. Okay. Will we When will our next meeting be It's scheduled for February 3rd. Okay. Glancing at it. I don't think we have anything on the docket, but we'll keep you updated. Okay. Thank you. I entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Second. Been moved and second to adjurnn. All those in favor say I. I. I. Motion carries. Thank you.