Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, we will call to order the Spring Hill Planning Commission work session. Okay, we have the comprehensive plan.

Yeah, that's about it.

I don't know if I need to read the rest of this.

No, no. Okay. So the way we have this kind of set up is to be informal. We really kind of want it to be something that everybody on the Planning Commission and members of the public and other interested parties feel comfortable just giving their feedback on approachable that you know they can reach out to staff they can reach you know you guys can reach out to us at any time so try to make this a little fun sometimes urban planning can be a little dry and dorky at times and we really drill down into it so Apologize if it's a little less than formal, but I think trying to just kick off the conversation, bring some energy to this, regardless of what may have happened in the past with the comprehensive plan and the discussions, and I think everybody is really picturing this as a fresh start. Let's capitalize on the work that was done that was well done, and it is useful for us to build upon and take forward, and things that may not be as useful going forward, maybe we just kind of sit it off to the sidelines and use that as a kind of a barometer to see if it's still relevant or not. And this is for everybody in the audience. For those at home, I know that this is being live streamed. We've got all of our IT issues worked out. So let me bring this up. Amy, I am not on. It's not showing. How do I do that? Okay All right, so I'm gonna just do a quick presentation and then chance for any questions after that and then Ian will come up and Do a quick little interactive thing it's a phone based app with a QR code we put the link out on the city's Facebook page and so that anybody can go out and look at that and participate at home or in the audience. Some of it will be real-time question and answer. Some of it will be kind of a take-home assignment. Yes.

Did you already post that or you will be posting that?

It's already posted.

Already posted. Okay, thank you.

Yeah. And then... You know, depending on time, it's really an open forum for the Planning Commission to ask questions, ask us to delve into things. We have some other ideas to help maybe expand upon some of the things we're bringing up here today. But in general, it's just kind of a lot of it will be for, it may seem redundant to the Planning Commissioners who've been doing this, but for those at home and in the audience, We're going to take a big step back and talk about what is comprehensive plan, how does it fit in with the city's goals and the city's processes, and where does it fit, and then just kind of some analogies. It's kind of a first part is at least a little bit of a built upon a presentation I gave to the Chamber of Commerce earlier this year. So we will go from there. And if I can make this work, we will do this. Hope it works. All right, so these are some of the myths maybe that I have heard over my 20 some odd year career in planning and things I see on Facebook and things I hear in community meetings. The first is that the city builds or develops neighborhoods, shopping center offices, and industrial projects. I see that sometimes in public forums when it says, why did the city build this here? Why did the city build a neighborhood here? Why did the city build a factory here or a warehouse there. The truth is that private developers who are in this as a business looking to make money, they build and develop those types of private development. The city typically builds roads, the sewer infrastructure, water infrastructure, parks, trails, public facilities, the justice center or a wastewater treatment plant, parks building, police station, things of that nature. The city, at least here in Spring Hill, does not go out and partner with developers to actually construct, say, like in Kansas City, Missouri, or Unified Government, maybe a low-income housing project or an affordable housing project. We just don't do that here. We, as a city, may offer some incentives and help financially to bring in the types of development that the governing body would like to see. And so maybe the city does some offset with tax income or tax burden or something like that to help incentivize development, especially at the beginning, to really attract the kind of development we want and use that as a springboard to attract more development. The second kind of myth is that The city actually decides where businesses and neighborhoods actually locate. We don't. We have a comprehensive plan, which we will get into in a little bit. And then from that, we go into zoning, in which that's the legal regulatory framework of where people can build certain land uses. But we actually don't dictate where, say, a McDonald's goes. you know, they, you know, or a Burger King. And we don't regulate competition between different businesses. Some of those industries like to locate near other end users like that. So they like to be, you know, gas stations like to be located at an intersection with other gas stations. It's competition, but it's also, you know, a... Nexus of users and so that if one is busy They may go to the other or if somebody has a personal preference to go to quick trip over Casey's that's that's how they locate so and within those zoning frameworks the city doesn't have as much control over what land uses go in there. For example, the C2 or Commercial 2 zoning district allows office buildings, doctors' offices, daycares, restaurants, but also a library and things like that. So those types of land uses actually fit within those zones or the comprehensive plan. And then the private developers know their site selection criteria, and they go where they think they're going to be most successful. We can, as a city, influence where businesses locate and neighborhoods are proposed by planning for future development. But again, we're not the developer. We set a vision and then put in the regulatory frameworks to help us achieve that vision. And then it's up to private development interests to kind of help us build that vision. The third myth is that the comprehensive plan is the gold standard legal document that dictates what growth will happen and where In reality the comprehensive plan is the vision of what the city could look like in the future and a guide to get there and taken at a specific point in time. So our goal is to bring forward a comprehensive plan for the Planning Commission to adopt sometime in early 2027. And that will be based upon three to four years' worth of data, trends, information at that time, and then a comprehensive plan is brought forward. But that really is a snapshot in time of the vision of where the city can go in the future. Some cities, in particular, I think Florida has a state law that requires all development to be in accordance with the comprehensive plan. The state of Kansas does not have that, so it's up to individual cities to do that. A lot of cities don't treat their comprehensive plan as the legal document because the legal document, the legal framework is zoning. part of comprehensive plan I believe I mentioned this one of the other times we got together was you know there is a future land use map included in a comprehensive plan the future land use map is just a graphic visual depiction of growth patterns and development patterns and where things can go and it's just one component of a comprehensive plan which I have some information about that future or in a future slide it's not just And some people equate the future land use map to the comprehensive plan. And truly, the future land use map is just one component of it. So this is kind of how, and I stole a bunch of stuff from other cities via Google. So this has not been tailored to Spring Hill because I just really wanted to kind of have this discussion. I think once we get a consultant on board, they will help us refine this to tailor it to Spring Hill. So typically how the comprehensive plan fits into the city's activities is there's usually a city or community-wide vision. The city does have a vision statement on its website. I don't remember it word for word, but it talks about the aspirational goals of what the city wants to be and who it wants to be and who the city desires to serve. Based upon that vision, the comprehensive plan Potentially some area plans is kind of the umbrella under which other plans would fall So the state law does allow the city to adopt a comprehensive plan and to have a Planning Commission Which then for example allows us to have a transportation component to that plan which then allows the city to adopt subdivision regulations to get the builders to build the streets in the subdivision, or to dedicate right-of-way so we have enough room to build the roads, or to dedicate parks to the city, things of that. The capital improvement program, which is the city's infrastructure, long-range forecast, and year-by-year commitment to invest city dollars, public dollars into public facilities, is based upon some of the tenants and goals and policies in the comprehensive plan. So underneath that umbrella of the comprehensive plan, which typically contains the current conditions, needs, and an issues section to identify the community needs and wants, visioning, goals, policies, and objectives, a future land use plan, and the implementation strategies. So a good comprehensive plan has measurable steps at the end that the city can use and that the planning commission and governing body can use to help achieve those goals in the comprehensive plan and also kind of a measuring stick to see how we're doing in accomplishing those goals. Underneath the comprehensive plan, that umbrella, then you will have your functional plans like a housing plan, an economic development plan, a transportation plan, a parks and open space plan, things of that nature all tie back to the city's future growth and development patterns and services that are identified as the city wanting to provide. A side component to that are the development tools, the development regulations, the zoning code, the subdivision regulations, the building permit requirements, the codes that we adopt, the technical specs for road profiles, things of that nature all help implement the comprehensive plan. And then, again, as I mentioned, the capital improvement program, fiscal budget analysis, fiscal impact analysis. We had a meeting internally as the city works through its budget with the finance director looking at future permits that we anticipate and where development can happen, because then that's used to help create the budget to help plan for capital investment. And then the administration of those development tools is applying those codes as we review building permits. development plans for subdivisions or shopping centers, and also really drilling down to code enforcement on individual properties to make sure that the quality of life and the aesthetics throughout the community help keep that appearance and physical upkeep of the city at a certain level to keep the quality of life high, property values at a high or at least level place. The comprehensive plan. is this another graphic I found but I thought works well it's it's generalized it provides general guidance and direction for city growth and development it's comprehensive it addresses all the elements or components felt to be important in affecting the physical economic and social concerns of the city it's long range it is a Destination into the future some cities do that at 10 years some do it at 20 some really go out far 30 40 years and a good comprehensive plan has a 30 20 30 year vision, but also has an implementation steps and Periodic reviews every year or five years to see if those overall You know components and elements need to be adjusted or modified A good plan should not be stagnant. It should evolve over time. And I attempted to have a little humor in one of my sections up for about sometimes people can get so hung up on following a rigid plan that they don't see the trees from the forest. You know, all they can see is they get tunnel vision, like, you know, a horse in a carriage ride with the blinders on, and they really can't see what else is going on because they're so dead set and committed to this plan that they may miss out on something or be unwilling to consider maybe some new information that comes forward throughout time because none of us can predict the future. And a comprehensive plan is not a zoning ordinance. The zoning ordinance is the legal regulatory framework. The plan is not that. It is the guide and should be treated as such and therefore can be amended, can be modified, especially if a property owner wishes to develop their property not in accordance with the comprehensive plan, Under our city code, the conformance or how it relates to the comprehensive plan is one of over 14 different criteria for the city staff to consider, planning commission, and governing body to consider when reviewing a rezoning request. Or it's one of the criteria for reviewing, say, a preliminary development plan. It's not the only criteria. Not to say that it doesn't matter. It is a big component of it because it should, as a good comprehensive plan, it should help guide future growth. The goal is to not just adopt a plan to check the box and say we did it, but actually have something we can use. These are some of the components or elements that are typically found in a comprehensive plan. usually unique to the city and to the issues that are identified. So some of these may not be appropriate for Spring Hill and others that aren't listed may be more appropriate for Spring Hill. But typically there's sections related to community identity, land use, both existing land use and future anticipated land uses and where those may be best located in the community. Transportation, what are they gonna be the Primary corridors, north, south, east, west. Spring Hill has a state highway running right kind of through the middle of it. There's an interstate over to our west and another state highway to our east. And so transportation, not just cars, but we have freight rail lines that run right through the middle of town as well, and trails and multimodal type things like that. Urban design, what does the built environment look like? What are the buildings for commercial development or industrial developments or city facilities, public facilities, or the individual houses that get built? What do those look like? And how are those situated on a piece of property so as to how does that impact the public realm? What does somebody feel like when they're walking down the street? Do they feel that it's at a pedestrian scale, that it relates well to them walking? Or do they feel like the buildings are towering over them or that they're so spread out they just feel out in the open? Economic development is a big part and I would imagine be a big part of our comprehensive plan as we try to grow as a city and bring the amenities and shopping jobs to the community to help us be a well-rounded, well-balanced community. Communities that are heavily or almost entirely invested in one sector, whether it's all retail or all industrial or all jobs, may not fare as well if there's a downturn in one of those industries. So if the industrial core or section of the economy kind of goes off, kind of goes into a lull in kind of the ups-and-down cycle that all sectors do in a community or if a big large employer the city has one employer at 10,000 jobs and for some reason that place closes can have a real detrimental impact to that town just like if there's a recession that really impacts retail and the city is heavily dependent on retail sales tax such as during a recession and it's the type of retail that is not necessity retail, then during those times, some of those stores are not gonna generate the same amount of sales tax, and that could really impact a city's budget. Housing, what type of housing is being provided? What is anticipated to be needed in the future? Not just what types, but the design. What are the trends going forward? How does that impact the the other components, land use, economic development. In some states and in some cities and counties, a single family home, providing the service, the roads, the upkeep, the pavement, the infrastructure, can actually cost the city more than what that home brings in in property tax. Whereas other types of housing, more density or a more efficient use of the land because you can fit more units on the same amount of infrastructure that's used, especially along the perimeter streets. Parks and open space is a big component, typically. And that goes back to quality of life. Where do people recreate? Where is the open spaces? How accessible it is? Where it's located to be able to best serve the overall community? What scale? Do we have one big park or do we have lots of different size parks that have lots of different intended uses and therefore can, where do they attract? Where are they pulling people in? Heritage conservation, if there are open spaces or historic areas like our downtown, a component to help preserve those and help those evolve over time while maintaining the essential character that makes them worth preserving. Infrastructure is a huge component again community facilities if we continue to grow as a city Could we and we don't have a fire district But the fire district would look at our comprehensive plan and our neighboring communities comprehensive plan to see where growth is happening so in their future planning they can see we may need another fire station somewhere or Where do we think we need to plan for road? investments and road widening like we're doing on 199th and when and where does that timing and when is it needed and And most comprehensive plans now have a section on resilience and sustainability and equity. How do we make the comprehensive plan work for all different residents? Not just those that participate in the process, but those that can't participate, those that are marginally represented. How does the city use a comprehensive plan to, for example, on that economic development, have the resiliency to bounce back in a recession or to have a diverse portfolio of tax revenue coming in? And also sustainability. How do we grow over time that's not going to consume all of our resources? And again, you know, the city having to just keep consuming and eventually it's like a house that breaks down over time, deferred maintenance. And if you don't upkeep with it on a yearly basis, it's going to end up in a big repair at the end. So all that said, that's a lot of words. And so these are just kind of the components where a comp plan fits. You know what is a comprehensive plan and we'll get into that here in a little bit more, so I have come up with kind of a the way I see it in an analogy for me is like. The comprehensive plan and zoning and development is kind of like planning a vacation. You know. For my family we don't do a lot of vacations, but if we did we would say where do we want to go. and come up with a destination. What do we want to do? And that's similar to the conference plan. What do we want to do? What do we want to have the city be in 30 years? It's picking that destination, planning that route to get there. This is kind of the itinerary. This is the map we're going to follow. As with any family or group or friend group, if they're going on a big friend trip or whatever, they're going to have differing opinions on who wants to do what and how to get there. Some people may want to drive. Some people may want to fly. Some people like to have it planned out to the 15 minute increments. Other people like to kind of just wing it and figure out how it goes. The comprehensive plan process should be a way to help build consensus and work together to find compromise in that and you know, see where the commonalities are and then also come up with a trip itinerary that really works for everybody going on the trip so that one person doesn't feel like they're getting, you know, left out more and that another person maybe isn't getting, you know, taking control of the process. So just a quick little somewhat humorous analogies that I have found. I hope it works. No. That's from a Saturday Night Live skit. So just in that alone, they're trying to figure out where they want to go, and then back in the day, I mean this was what, 10, 15 years ago, there were like five different map options you could have chosen. You could have done Yahoo Maps, MapQuest, Google Maps. So actually trying to use the right mapping service is a way to help plan how you're going to get to where you want to go. This other one might be aging myself a bit if I can get it to work. It's classic.

Who wants to see the triptych?

Dad, we're playing.

Okay, shut off the video games. Come on, Russ. Shut off. I know you'll enjoy this. I've worked out the whole trip on the computer so we get the maximum amount of fun time at Wally World without missing any of the good stuff along the way.

Oh, there you go.

One of the greatest movies of all time.

Dad, we're playing.

Okay, shut off the video games. Come on, Buzz. Shut off. I know you'll enjoy this. I've worked out the whole trip on the computer so we get the maximum amount of fun time at Wally World without missing any of the good stuff along the way. Go. There's us, and there's Wally World. Now let's just take a look at day one, shall we?

Honey, come on in. We're gonna do day one.

Okay, now there's the family truckster as we leave Chicago. Rusty, please do not eat the truckster. Russ, do you mind? I'm trying to work this out here on the old computer. Please, Russ. Oh, great, Audrey. Thank you, Audrey. That's just great.

Goddamn, here I come.

All right, that's enough for us. Okay, now I think we're moving forward. Thank you. Good shot, Audrey.

Dad, I forgot. Why aren't we flying?

Why aren't we flying? Because getting there is half the fun. You know that.

All right, let's get out of that one. So I think that one is, it helps, you know, understand that there's a lot of excitement when the city adopts a comprehensive plan. Hey, we're jumping off. We're doing this. We're planning this trip. We're going to go this path. And then something comes up. And almost immediately, something that we didn't plan for comes into play. And then at the end, well, why aren't we flying? We planned this huge road trip, and then somebody said, well, why aren't we flying? Well, that's a normal process. It's iterative. That's the interactive part of a comprehensive plan. It's not meant to be static. So again, the comprehensive plan is the guide envisioned for the next 20, 30 years. It's setting the destination. It's picking the route to get there based upon the information we have and trying to blend all the different opinions into a singular document that represents all. The comprehensive plan, again, is not a zoning document. is the regulatory framework based upon the comprehensive plan. It's one of the tools in the toolbox to help us achieve that. It's reading the map. And back when we had paper maps, and even now with the phones, it can be tough to navigate as you're driving and going on that road trip. The zoning can't plan for everything. The comprehensive plan can't plan for everything. You know, we have a list of allowed land uses in all of our zoning districts that is not exhaustive. It didn't come up with every single land use that could be possible. Some of the old comprehensive plans from the 50s and 60s did attempt to taxidermists and things that just aren't as relevant anymore. And there could be 300, 400 land uses identified, some in the sales tax codes. And it gets really detailed. More and more zoning is trying to simplify it and allow for, say, a service-oriented use to mean a hairdresser, a barber, nail salon, somebody doing taxes, all under that use of a service-oriented use. Zoning can have amendments. They can have changes. People can say, yes, this is what my property is zoned. This is what I'm allowed for, but I want to do something different. So these are just a little bit of humorous things about how zoning can be used to implement comprehensive plans and how do we read a map along the way. So let's see if these work.

Hi, Chandler, do something. Come on, do something. I am. I'm ignoring you. Okay, here. I'm gonna be the on-camera guy. All right. First stop, Westminster Abbey. Oh, what the hell is that? That's London, baby. All right, the hotel's here. Wait. No, we want to go... No. I know. I'm gonna have to go into the map. Okay, if you see a little version of me in there, kill it. I got it. Here we go. Okay, listen, listen, we're not going to have to walk this way the entire time, are we? Man, you made me lose it.

All right, go ahead. You might got a question. Yeah, of course. Have you, since we're talking about zoning, have you dove into what Overland Park has been discussing, either you or Ian, about removing the zoning and just going into character of the surroundings? I mean, do you have an opinion on that?

It's one of the Well, how do I say this in planning circles, as you know, in zoning is one of those there's always a new way to do it better than what was done in the past, so when zoning first came out. Back in the 1920s and 30s and actually based upon loss from the late 1800s it was zone, it was done to help protect. light and open space above buildings from New York City when you have super tall buildings right up to the property lines overcrowding and industrial factories and everything just drowning out the light. So there's ways to separate buildings from each other. And then it kind of turned into a way to separate land uses so that an industrial use wouldn't be next to a single family house or something. It was worse than that. We're not talking about industry today. These were pretty nefarious uses. Over time, that's kind of evolved. That's when in the 1970s and 80s and even 60s, the idea of a planned unit development or a planned district came into being to create these flexible zones. Some of the other things we've been trying are incentive-based zoning. One of the ones that's been kind of popular over the last, I don't know, 15, 20 years was form-based codes, which is kind of what you're referencing, where it doesn't really look at land use within a building. It looks at the look and shape and feel of that building, the scale, where it sits on a lot, with the idea being that if, for all intents and purposes, if the buildings all look good, And there's no external impacts to surrounding property owners, it really shouldn't matter if it's a business or house or a daycare or restaurant and so that's kind of this form based. You know idea of using design to help impact the urban design and aesthetics and feel rather than separating land uses necessarily kind of found in some of the more. urban core cities like in Chicago, New York, where you could have a storefront next to an apartment on the ground floor and all that. So I think there's certainly a place for it. I don't think in the cities that I've seen it and heard feedback from it, like Denver adopted a pure form-based code, thinking that they're going to be able to design their way out of things. And the built environment and the designers didn't like it because it basically said, we can't even design buildings anymore. All we can do is change the materials on the outside. And so it may have been some cities went too far into that. Within the past five years, I think some cities have gone into the idea of let's remove the idea of single family homes and allow single family homes to be built anywhere in any zone. And also you can do duplex or three plexus in any zone. I know that city of Minneapolis did that. I think in a city like a suburban community and on that suburban kind of rural fringe that Spring Hill is and a lot of the metro area down here, I don't think a one size fits all approach works. I think people in the community still like to have single-family houses. I don't think we can design that out of people. I think going back through the history of human civilization, the idea of having a personal space for your family or a living unit has been around since then. So there was a movement earlier, say early 20th century, that it was like a button. People would just press it and say, density, density. It doesn't matter where. Density is what we need. And they essentially said, we won't build any more single family and people will not want it because that's just what they're used to. I think that was wrong because I think people will want to still have that. So conversely, just providing a different option for some of the other people that may not want a single family house, for example, is a good idea. Using some form-based codes along certain corridors or historic areas, maybe like downtown or along Webster Street, So this is just an example so that you get the houses or the businesses or any of the buildings up towards the street and you put the parking in back really can make that work along certain corridors and in certain areas where it's most important. I don't know if using form based code or new urbanist design where it goes back to the traditional neighborhoods of the 1950s with alleys in the back. I don't think that's appropriate for an industrial park because industrial parks or you know, whereas they're based on functionality. And cities that have enough desirability that people are going to go there anyway, say like Hilton Head, South Carolina, they can do whatever they want because anybody's going to go build there, and people are still going to want to go there. A city like Spring Hill, where we're competing with neighbors, not just in the KC Metro, but other similar communities like us in the Midwest or in, you know, central regions of the United States, If we adopt something that's too strict, we're going to kind of shut the doors on development. People may not want to come here. So I think a blended approach is most appropriate. Long answer to that question.

No, thank you.

No, go ahead. And he brought up, I think you brought up at one of the work sessions, the planned development, the new district zoning. Doesn't that kind of help a little bit because it combines the overlay, what is it, the protected overlay with the planned district. It's a little more flexible.

We're going to do that a little differently in phases because it just turned out to be such a heavy lift and we wanted to get something done. But yeah, that's where planned unit developments and planned districts and protected overlays came into play was cities inherently knew that they weren't going to be able to come up with every scenario in a zoning ordinance or a zoning code. And so it allowed some flexibility in that to add maybe a use that wasn't listed as an allowed use in that base zoning district and not just allow it throughout every property that has that zoning. But maybe on this property, that use is appropriate if certain other things are provided, such as additional landscaping or screening. We brought forward the Brycliffe commercial. with the accessory outdoor storage, which wasn't allowed in the C2 zone. So that's why we did the protected overlay to allow the outside storage. But in order for staff to be able to recommend that, we worked the developer to screen the entire area, put buffering around it, landscaping. They chose to put in kind of a lean-to roof coverage structure so that it didn't have as many negative impacts on that property that, you know, wouldn't necessarily be applicable on every single c2 property, you know in in the city so. I like the plan development or plan district option I didn't get overwhelming for a city, the size of overland park where if you're trying to. Maintain records and get information out to the public and you have 500 different planned districts it can be kind of a nightmare to keep up with and actually administer because somebody Reviewing a building permit for a single-family home It's gonna have trouble remembering. Okay, this subdivision has distinct development standards So I got to go dig these up and so it can just be kind of tough in that regard but Yeah, it's kind of one of those, hey, we know it's not going to be perfect. And so we want to build in a way to accommodate that if the development being proposed or the use being proposed is as good or equal to what the base zoning district would allow. So as I mentioned earlier, there is a little bit of caution to adopting a plan and writing the plan without any Consideration for flexibility like like the zoning analogy Until you know and just being kind of blinded by that and so this may be a little bit Not as Applicable, but I do think in using the technology we have today.

It's straight

Well, we're 0 for 6. Last chance is the Elmhurst Country Club, other side of the lake on the southeast side.

I don't get it. I really don't get it. I thought this would work. Through everything I had at that guy, nothing.

That's how it goes sometimes, you know? You lose everything, and everything falls apart, and eventually you die, and no one remembers you. That is a very good point, Dwight.

Make a right turn.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no. It means bear right.

No, it said right. It said take a right.

No, no, no, no. No, look. It means go up to the right, bare right, over the bridge and hook up with 307.

Make a right turn. Maybe it's a shortcut, Dwight. It said go to the right.

It can't mean that.

There's a lake there. I think he knows where it is going.

This is the lake. The machine knows. This is the lake. Stop yelling at me.

No, it's up there.

There's no road.

Here.

Remain calm.

I have trained for this.

Okay.

It's in the window. Make a U-turn, if possible. Look out for legions! Michael! Are you okay? Swim for it! I got you! I got you! Michael! Michael! Let go! Let go of me! Come on! I got you! I got you! Michael, come on!

So just a little humorous take, but I know it's a very serious issue for a lot of people, but there is something to be said about, you know, just saying this is what we're going to do and we're going to follow this plan. This is how we're going to get there. Maybe doesn't allow the city that flexibility to say, hey, something else has come up or, hey, you know, there's this other, you know, destination we might want to try to add to our trip. And sometimes those unknowns end up being a bad idea and take you into something that didn't work out, trial and error. And I think having that humility as an organization, as a city and a community to say, hey, we tried, but this isn't really what we thought it would be. but also sometimes they work out, and it turns out to be better than anybody could have imagined. So I think, again, it's more of just a, hey, flexibility in these can be good, and just building that into those. And now I am completely locked out of that. So in terms of, and I'll just wrap up here quickly. So in terms of the pyramid of discretion, there's an analogy here. how the comprehensive plan fits with the other different types of development applications that we have. On the left, on that side of the triangle, at the green levels affords the most discretion, the most creativity. We're actually creating something. It's a plan. It's a vision that really is very subjective. And so there's a lot of discretion in that. As you start to move up the pyramid, you know, then the city would adopt ordinances and zoning and development standards to help implement the comprehensive plan and processes. And then as we get kind of further up, the level of discretion and ability to have creativity kind of goes down because peoples want certainty that they're gonna be able to build what they can build on a single family house. So if you wanna put up a shed, there's not a lot of discretion as to whether the city can allow you to build a shed or not. If you meet the setbacks and it meets all the building codes, there's almost no discretion. We're gonna let you build it. We're gonna approve that permit. And some of those we don't even require permits for. And so as we get further in the process, that level of discretion kind of, as long as somebody's meeting the codes and stuff, gets a little bit smaller. Future land use map from our 2010 comprehensive plan update. was limited in scale. It was 16 years ago. It doesn't even go up to the far north reaches of the current city boundary. It really took a look at the central part of the city and didn't forecast future growth at that time for what could have been 10, 15, 20 years down the road. And at the time, we were coming out of a recession. The housing market was not great. And so this map was based upon the information available to everybody at that time and hasn't been updated since. This shows the zoning map. As you can see, we go past 175th now. This doesn't even include all of our new newly annexed parts of the town. We have a great community here and we have a lot of property owners that want to bring their property into the city limits so that they can provide city services now or in the future when to market their property for development and not the future land use map may not match the zoning map every time. Sometimes you have a piece of ground on the future land use map that shows Commercial or mixed-use or industrial and it's still being used for agriculture and still may retain that agricultural zoning And so just that scale is able to fit all on one page for us to fit all of our different zoning districts It takes three pages because they are done at that parcel by parcel level versus a comprehensive plan of is done more generally. In these areas along corridors, say the Webster Street corridor or 199th, that's where you see more purple, more commercial land uses. You can see almost all of the commercial usually is at an intersection or follows a road. And then there's zoning transitions as you have an intersection of two arterial streets, could anticipate kind of a more intense land use area, and then using other land uses to help step down from that to provide buffers to single family homes and things like that. So just general kind of planning principles, but again, As part of the comprehensive plan update, there will be a new future land use map that takes into account all of the components we talked about earlier, economic development, land use, transportation, parks and open space, trail connections, all of that to help provide that guidance. And then that plan is one of the review things that is looked at when somebody proposes a development. So that's kind of how they all interplay with each other. That kind of concludes my thing. I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm excited to kind of kick this process off. I think we have a lot of good engagement from the community. We have interest in general about the growth and the direction of the city. We have some new planning commissioners. We have some new staff. So I think there's a renewed excitement about this and trying to see where we all want to go in the next 20 years. Thanks, Mike.

I've answered any questions or we can let Ian come up. Is the timeline still kind of the same? Like May 20, was it 25th to kind of get the request?

Yep, we've got our responses back from some consultants and we're reviewing those and going to have an internal review committee that meets within the next two weeks and we still anticipate getting that to city council as long as we can pick one and Negotiate a good contract with good deliverables and meets all of our goals to the city governing body at the end of June Which keeps us on track?

Can we ask how many consultants through their hat in the ring?

I don't see that that been a problem.

We had five or six Awesome the one citizen. I don't know if you heard him at one of the workshops. He said like He said maybe you should look at a request for qualifications, not a request for proposal, just because it would be more qualified for the consultants. But I didn't know the difference between those two.

A request for qualifications is really to – The way we wrote the request for proposals included a requirement that they list their qualifications. That's what I figured. Yeah. So we rolled it into one to help save time, because usually it can go request for qualifications, and then you pick maybe you get 10 you pick five and then you ask for proposals from those five and it really can kind of elongate that choosing process and so it is one of the the primary um review criteria that we're looking at is is the is whatever firm that's chosen qualified do they have experience doing the work who are the project managers that they're having going to put on this what experience do they have and what is their approach to comprehensive planning you know every consulting firm has some similarities, but they also try to differentiate themselves and kind of approach things differently. So all of that's in our review criteria. Well, I will let Ian jump up here, and we will have a little bit of interactive exercises here.

OK, good evening. We're going to be doing a poll, a very long poll, so long that we probably will not get through all of it tonight. But it will be available for people to finish after the session and going into the next week. So don't fret if we don't finish it tonight. We'll get as far as we can. So we'll go ahead and start by having everybody, if you've got a mobile device or computer, going over to slido.com and entering that code or using a QR code scanner. This can be done from anywhere. We can have up to 200 people hop in, so if there's anybody at home that wants to join as well, please do. One thing you'll notice once we start is it's gonna have every single question listed. I originally had thought of going question by question and having them available as we went through, but that kind of negates the ability to come in at a later time and do the presentation or questions. All right, so let's go and get started then. In one word, how would you describe Spring Hill? Let me set this up so we can actually see the answers. And we'll kind of take a couple minutes, maybe two, three minutes per question, just get people's answers in, and then we'll keep it moving since we've got a few. So we got growth, hometown, home, rural. No need to be quiet as well if you guys want to talk about it, too. Otherwise, we'll be sitting here quietly for quite a while. Give it another 30 seconds, then we'll move on. So this is broken up into two sections. tranche of questions has to do with Spring Hill as a community, how you perceive it, how you think it's currently doing, how you want it to go. And then the second section is a visual preference survey. So there are a bunch of photos of homes, one of which was my child home. So you get to rate them, and I get to be sad if you rate my childhood home poorly. What we'll do is next session I will collate the answers and then I'll kind of go through, analyze them, and then provide some stats, kind of do a recap of all the answers that were provided between today and a week from now when this poll closes. So we will go over it, just not tonight necessarily. And we probably will not get to the actual visual preference survey because there's some long form questions there that might take a little bit. So moving on. Rural was number one for sure. expanding potential growth home, hometown. All right, what do you think are Spring Hill's greatest strengths? I'm trying to think. I was originally intending to just leave these up for people to answer and then just come back around to it next week. I would like some input from you guys. Would you like to go through these long-form questions one by one? Or since it's available, just kind of have folks do it at home. Y'all can do them. You can come back to them next week. You can kind of just hit on the highlights, like the rating ones. We have a ranking question. What do you guys think? I'd like to do it at home, just think about it. OK.

I would say, yeah.

In that case, I'm going to skip ahead, and we'll just go to the rating one, which can be done, instant feedback. Cool. We'll do it like that.

It's the verbiage I'm having a hard time finding. I know what I want to say, but I don't know.

Yeah, some of them are a little tricky.

Being concise is tough. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, so how important is maintaining Spring Hill's small town character to you as the city grows? Which number is this? This is number five, I believe. You guys realize they're not numbered on the app, which is very helpful.

Let's do it.

Okay, well, I clicked my rating. I did, too, and mine's locked up. Okay, okay.

It locked up on you guys?

Yeah. I believe. Rating, and it's just locked up on the rating. Oh, wow, okay. Okay.

All right, well, Chuck's the only one who gets input.

Here, I'll change it.

Perfect.

Okay. I think some of them might have been marked as required questions.

My apologies.

If that's the case, it might have prevented you from answering any questions after it. So let me see. Well, I gave my rating. It's not on here.

It's not on there. We only care about Chuck's opinion. Congratulations, Chuck. In that case, let's experiment.

I would try leaving and rejoining the Slido because none of the questions are showing as locked or required preceding that one. And you can do it on the computer here, too.

My rating finally allowed me to unlock it and do whatever now. OK, perfect.

Maybe we should do that.

And again, if anything causes problems, this will be open for the next week. And if you want your voice heard and it's not going for whatever reason, you can shoot me an email, too, and I'll just mark it when I go through the responses. This is also kind of a, y'all are guinea pigs because we've never used this software before. I'm pretty happy that it actually loaded up and people are able to get in clearly, but I apologize for any technical hiccups with it.

And this is one of the things we're going to be working with any consultant that we get chosen to do some of these interactive polling real-time exercises. Some have clickers. Some do phone. As we can see, there's potential for some hiccups with that. But we're going to have a variety of different engagement. good tried-and-true face-to-face sit-downs, community meetings, stakeholder meetings, and then interactive sessions like this with some presentations and really trying to make it not as dry as maybe it can be because we want to encourage as much participation as possible.

Ian, did you get good feedback from the last planning commission when you sent out the questions regarding the conference plan?

I did. I did not hear back from everybody, but I have heard back from a fair few. But, yeah, the answers were fantastic, wonderfully thorough. I appreciate you all getting back to me. If I didn't respond, I apologize. It's been a very hectic week getting everything going with the comp plan. So just know that I have seen it, and I have read it.

Wait, there was an email?

You could email me. I think it was from the last session when we had, or the last workshop, we had some questions that were listed up at the very end. Oh, oh, oh. If you want to follow up, you could. You didn't have to. Okay, gotcha.

I was like, I missed something.

It flashbacks to like high school or college where you forget a test and you just, you know. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll go ahead and move on. Can I say something? Yeah.

I feel like we want to talk about being interactive. I feel like there's probably a lot of people out here that want to speak. Is there going to be a speech portion in this at all from the public?

So this is not a public hearing, so we don't have a public engagement section. That being said, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

The Planning Commission, what you guys want to do. That's your progress. You certainly can.

There's three fingers pointing back at you, sir.

I'm fine from here in front of the public.

Yeah. I mean, it's not like I want to take a lot of time. I feel like I have one good thing that I think people can think about this question.

Real quick, should we have him come up to the mics so that they can hear him on the live stream?

For record.

So just state your name and your address, please, before you get started. Sorry.

My name is Jason O'Kane. I live at 18804 Skyview Lane over in the Foxwood Ranch community. One thing that comes to mind when I'm looking at this question in particular right here is how important is maintaining Spring Hill's small town character as the city grows? How do you feel when you drive into Olathe? When you drive in from Spring Hill? How do you feel like when you drive into Lenexa Park? These are larger cities around town. I lived in Olathe for 20 years for that Grandview. But when you drive from Spring Hill to Olathe, I just want to get out of Olathe as fast as possible. And I lived there forever. So I feel like that's something you should think about when you think about how important is maintaining the small town feel of Spring Hill and the comprehensive plan in general. is that this town is, you know, the first question that Ian brought up was, how do you feel, was this town, I don't know exactly, I don't know if I can see it in here, but anyways, peaceful. I think that describes Spring Hill to me, is peaceful. I set out when fire pits in my house like neighbors over and just relax, you know, I can go outside besides Hearing a train every now and again, but I can go outside and it's quiet So quiet, it's not like that in Olathe It's never quiet So I just wanted to I felt like I just wanted to say something like that, you know Sometimes it's hard to express what you really want to say in these polls, which I think the polls are a great idea. But yeah, and you guys get out and talk to people, talk to the HOAs. I mean, that's what a lot of these communities are coming in here now. You know, most of these communities are HOAs. So make sure you get out, reach out to us, and talk to these people, besides talking to the older communities and the neighborhoods and stuff too. So that's it.

That's all I really wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, Ian, he brings up a good point here. Can the questions be changed, or are these set in stone? I could change them right now. Oh, I'm just wondering, you know, after we look at them.

Yeah, I mean, if there's something that you're thinking about, I'm not, actually, I have not tried adding a question if it's live. We can see. That being said, I do know that there are some longer form questions. I should have added, like, a custom at the end, say what you want type part, but I didn't. I'm kind of kicking myself now. That being said, there are some questions that are pretty broad. I'm sure that you've seen them, like what are the strengths, weaknesses of Spring Hill itself? So that could be an area to kind of fit in some additional thoughts. Was there a specific question that you wanted to add? No, I was just wondering, when we look this over, I mean, there might be commissioners' feedback on what might be wanted to be changed or added or... Yeah, if there's things that you think that maybe the question should have been worded differently, that's all great information because we're going to probably do this all over again and get the consult number. Yeah, yeah.

No, I'm just saying right now, like when we take it home, we come back and say, hey, maybe it's, right, not at the moment. Okay. I think I understand what you're saying. Yeah, so we might have, say, hey, maybe you want to word this differently or add something. Yeah.

And it's old. Just tell him his project's terrible. Man, tear me apart. No, I love this concept. This is cool.

Oh, thank you. And I think, as Ian said, once we have a consultant on board who's managing the comp plan process, there will be public surveys and things that will sort of recapture a lot of this information. So I see this as just kind of a first pass, just for some early indicators.

That's kind of a nice thing because early on when we do something like this in kind of an informal setting, we're able to inform when we go to talk to the consultant. We can say, hey, we tried this out. Here's what worked. Here's what didn't. Here are some questions that we think might have been answered better or phrased in a more effective manner. So yeah, this is all great. It doesn't have to be perfect for now. Skip over to a question that I think is kind of interesting. I want you to rank what's important for Spring Hill's future.

Which number is this?

Number seven. Two questions down.

Thank you. I keep expecting you to jump around, and you're not. Oh, yeah. Not too much. Not too much. Okay.

I think this kind of highlights an important part of the growth of any community, and it's that things are a give and take. If we could have it all, that'd be awesome. But sometimes, you know, you kind of have to balance the way that we go about growth and development. And that's not to say that we can't do our best to achieve all that we can, but sometimes we have to have priorities. So setting priorities, what the community wants, what the community feels is most important is useful. 100%. I like this question. I wrote it, so you know.

I agree with what you're saying on that because I know just based on things that have been on the internet and whatnot on Facebook and everything, and there's been like, oh, we need a better recreation center. We need this. But maybe only five people feel that way, whereas more people are like, oh, no, we need sidewalks or whatever. So I like this ranking to get a good idea from a vast majority of people instead of just – those who have Facebook versus those who don't or whatever. I, I think this is, this is good.

I'm super excited because I can see that we only have about seven to 10 people hopped on right now. I mean, with this open for the next week, I'm a stats nerd. I got the highest grade in stats when I was in college and I'm really excited to dive in once after a week to see what the responses are and what it looks like. I'm very excited to kind of dive in. Yeah.

And can you send us out a link for this so I can push it into my community with the Facebook group?

Yeah, the Facebook announcement for this meeting was updated, I think, like two hours ago when I sent it. So it has a link to it as well as the code. It should still be active after this meeting. I'll make sure not to close it out. And yeah, it's set to go until the 28th. Yeah, so expanding parks and rec options, preserving character, roads, businesses, jobs, and housing. So that is actually kind of leads me into the next question that I did want to know. And this question is the next one down How would you rate the current variety of housing options in Spring Hill I Guess to that to that end as well Kendra if you'd like to have more public engagement with us or folks coming up or not I mean, yeah I think I think that would be fine if more people wanted to come up while we're answering questions and kind of mulling things over Um, are you saying if they wanted to weigh in on a particular question? this one specifically in the context of how do you as individual individuals perceive housing variety? What does that mean to you?

So this is kind of what I was thinking with what Steve was saying earlier is what do you mean by variety?

Yeah. And that's kind of, it's somewhat ambiguous on purpose because it can mean a lot. It can mean small lot, single family homes. It can mean I want duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes. It can mean I want ADUs. Um, Yeah, this one's kind of hard to interpret. I'm calling it intentional. I'm realizing it might not have been the best question. So that's why I want to get some input. So I don't know if anybody up here wants to go first, or however you want to. What does variety mean to you, is the question.

So I'll just take a stab. But just in general, when I see that question, I think of price points and maybe life stages. When you're starting out, you want affordable, probably apartment-style housing. And I'm not – everybody's different. Everyone has a different path. I'm not trying to pigeonhole anyone. And then at some point, a lot of folks then want single-family homes to raise families. And then as you get older, you might want maintenance-provided housing like villa-type housing. Um, and there's a lot, you know, there's, there's a thousand things in between, but then a lot of it's price point too. So depending on where you are in life, you know, is there something in the community that, that, that meets your needs that you can afford, you know, as a part of it. And, you know, I think affordable housing just doesn't, it doesn't, and housing variety to me doesn't automatically imply, um, affordable housing. You know, it, it, it's a very wide spectrum and you can have really nice,

Developments and neighborhoods and then also you can have hopefully more entry-level, you know lower price point options Whether that's multifamily or apartment if you're trying to attract new people in you got to be able to cover all life stages exactly close to well and being and being like you said Subjective because kind of like if someone's like I need a good cheap mechanic What's what's cheap to you? What might be cheap to me is not cheap to Josh and you know so it's it is very subjective on what you think is affordable versus what I think is affordable versus what they think is affordable. It is interesting and I understand the ambiguity of the question just because of that.

There are a thousand different ways to define anything in life and especially in this area of planning and the city's growth and development. you can have as many different ways to look at it as a community as there are residents in it. So absolutely. I'll open it up to anybody who has some additional thoughts on this by any chance.

I think every housing developer should have some type of story.

Sorry, can you come back up here to talk into the microphone? You're going to get your steps in tonight.

I was just thinking like this, and since Jason O'Kane, 18804 Skyview Lane. So the folks that are online can hear you. Okay. We can hear you, obviously. That's fine, that's fine. Recent weather-related incidents lately, you know, we've had quite a few tornado scares, you know, weather patterns, changes, all kinds of stuff like that. I know of a lot of housing developments that are being developed right here in Spring Hill that have no type of storm shelter. They have zero basements.

I brought that up at the last.

Yeah, they have zero basements, and they're not allowed to, they're not, any residents that are asking to put in storm shelters, they're not allowing it. Isn't that awesome? It's absolutely ridiculous.

We're working on the code to have basements or a safe room.

At minimum requirement.

Yeah, but as of right now, all the people in those housing developments are going to be grandfathered into not having nothing. You can't go back and make somebody put something in. Maybe you can allow it, that a resident could ask for a permit to put something in later on, but the developer is not doing anything like that. I know people that live in those houses, and every time... a storm comes through, they get scared. Now, you can look back on and say, well, why do they buy a house like that? It's at a price point that people can afford. A brand new house in the low 300s is very attractable to people nowadays. You can't really get that too often. If you get a house with a basement, you're going to be spending at least $400,000. So, but yeah, some type of storm shelter.

Did you see the concepts that were presented a couple meetings ago for storm shelter options?

I did not. I was not here for it.

Okay. There were, I think you'd be pleased by the conversation.

Well, if this was the last meeting, which was after all the storms, we were having IT issues and it wasn't last year.

Oh, true. Yeah, yeah, true. But prior to that, during one of the work sessions, we... Remember we kind of went through different options.

Okay. Sorry.

I was joking about the jiffy lube option or in your garage But it seems like that the direction that a lot of people seem to like is this basically a safe It's basically a bolt-down.

Yeah structure that you put in the garage.

Yeah, that's in the garage And so I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future that becomes part of the city's code.

I I mean, they make a Jiffy Loo option. I mean, you can actually get that installed. There's companies that do stuff like that, or even old school, something outside in your backyard, something that's allowable just so that people can have, or a community shelter in the community that is designated so people do have a choice.

Which we did discuss that at the last meeting, too.

That would also be an option, and not just as single-family homes. Any type of apartment complex, duplex, any other multifamily housing developments should probably have some type of regulation, should definitely look into that. I feel like homeowners around here are taking advantage on some of the developers around here. I think they're coming in, taking advantage of you know, the boom in housing development, even though housing development, you know, housing market is not that great right now, but it still is pretty good here in Spring Hill. And developers are build, build, build. Labor costs are up. Material costs are up. But their profit margins are not down. They're doing stuff quickly, fast. And they're just, you know, soon they'll be gone. They'll develop Spring Hill and they'll be gone. and the residents will be stuck with everything that's left. So we need to make sure we're updating city code. That's been talked about, I know, before, but we're using 2006 code. So that should be a priority, especially looking at towards the future of this town, of just also doing things to protect You know the homeowner, you know people that have homes built here. Most people have no idea what the process is of building a homes that are Expecting the developers to do a good job They're expecting the city officials to inspect their houses properly and I feel like sometimes that gets cut short You know, they're not doing a good job and I'm not blaming it necessarily on the city inspectors or anything like that they're just they have a time constraint they can only do so much inspecting on a home. They can't spend hours at every inspection making sure that everything's being done properly. So, I mean, there's things like that we need to look at. And just future development of these communities of making sure that these, anything that we're developing we're looking into the future of this comprehensive plan. You know, like I've talked about my neighborhood before of the crosswalk issue over at Fort Spring Middle School and Wolf Creek Elementary, you know, that was not in anybody's, you know, eyesight there that needed to happen. And they could have had our builder build up one side and when they built for spring middle, they could have built up the other side and then it wouldn't have been an issue at all, you know, taking funds from both places. Um, but now the city is going to have to end up paying for it and trying to get grant money. I know they're, they're working on that. So, um, it's just things like that that needs to make sure that we're looking at everything when we're developing an area. Um, I mean even, even if you think about developing an area talking to, residents around those areas to make sure that there are things that are going on there that maybe you're not thinking about or other people aren't thinking about, having community meetings and stuff like that if you're going to do any major developing. So I kind of went on with that, so sorry about that. But anyways, I think you guys are doing a good job with the comprehensive plan. I think you guys are taking the time that you need to do it. Stick with it and just make sure that you're getting it out there as much as possible. I mean, getting it out to Facebook group pages and stuff like that. And I think it's super important. So appreciate it.

Thank you, Jason.

I think, hey, Jason, you're largely preaching to the choir. And a lot of things you brought up are, I've heard, brought up by city staff. And the city now has the largest community development staff that I think we've ever had and certainly the most qualified. So I think things like the crosswalk, I think we're in transition. And I think the standards of development going forward will be better and will be improved. So that's what I'm seeing, which is encouraging. Yep. John Waterman.

Yes. 21110 West 186 Terrace, Dayton Creek. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I think when I look at this question, obviously there's a myriad of ways you can answer it. I mean, one that kind of jumps out at me right off bad is, yes, there needs to be a variety of homes. I think there also needs to be a variety of development of homes, right? So right now, there's just a plethora of developments that are HOA managed. And that's great, right? I mean, for a developer and everything, HOAs, you know, protect them, allow them to build out the development for years and have nice, you know, secure, rigid rules of engagement and all that. But that's not the only kind of development that attracts people. Cities and keep the cost down. Not having HOA developments does that. So I would kind of throw that into the mix of a variety of housing options. A non-HOA regulated housing development would be nice. Kind of expanding on that to a comprehensive plan level. Having neighborhoods that are designed in different areas of the city that have a connectedness kind of back to the roots or the core of the city, if you will, however we want to define the core, whether that's Old Main Street or somewhere on Webster. But these areas would be a localized area, which is kind of bigger than a clustered neighborhood, but it would have a little bit of commercial mixed in, maybe coffee shop or two maybe not two but one coffee shop or something in the character kind of of the downtown you know that I mean modern construction but it kind of taking up taking small pieces of what makes Spring Hill Spring Hill broadening it out and I think that's what I mean to me that's what that's how Spring Hill grows is keep keeping that quaint small town charm and just kind of, you know, steadily building it out. You know, I agree. We, we, I mean, I moved from Olathe and that was why I wanted to get away was just the, just the congestion, you know, that it was becoming. I think ultimately that's probably in our future and somewhat inevitable, but I think there are ways to limit it a little bit by just being smart in how we grow and how we develop those little clustered neighborhoods to where people can walk and go and grab a coffee or go and grab something at a restaurant that's right. kind of in their neighborhood. They don't have to drive to the center of town. I love going to like Pop Street Shop and the Bean in downtown. And I would like the idea of going to First Friday's, but I don't know if I, I don't want to go down there and then try to find a place to park because I can't just walk there. I would have to walk down 169. That's not a good idea. Maybe when there's two lights, I'll try it. Anyway, I'll give it up now, but plenty more discussion to come. Appreciate the opportunity and love the engagement. So thank you.

Thank you, John. We appreciate you. Ian, you're up.

Well, I'll be honest. That was kind of the last question that I had. Actually, no. One last one.

All right.

which it looks like there's already 11 votes, so I think everybody's already answered this one. But in one word, how would you describe what Spring Hill should be like in 10 years? This is two questions down. In one word. One question. Clean, admired. Thriving, peaceful options, started dining, possibly. Chains, bourbon. I like that, admired. Admired and clean. This is more just kind of a, something to ponder about because I think a lot of people imagine, you know, they kind of get focused in on what they want their surrounding area to look like, what they want that to be. You know, they have ideas of what they don't want it to be, but they don't think the community as a whole as much. What kind of aspirations you have. I mean, you kind of know what you are, but what you want to be and how you describe that is something else entirely. So I'm very curious to see how this plays out over the next week. Like I said, there's a whole other section here all about housing, different types of housing. So please do that if you haven't had a chance. Share this link with people. Facebook groups, anybody you can kind of get it out to. The more participation, the better. This is not like a deciding thing. This is just something to kind of set the stage for when we have a consultant come on board and show them these results, kind of get them primed for what the community already is thinking. and then move forward with them. Do you have any other additions?

Is there any other questions, feedback?

I'll just make a couple comments maybe, but one is it's always a balance, and Mike, I know you've said that, and the balance that I see in my mind often is this notion of trying to protect the qualities and attributes of the area that drew everyone who's in this room here in the first place, balanced against the fact that we may not own the land that's adjacent to our neighborhood, and it will get developed, and what kind of development is going to come in. That's one. Mike, I heard you make a comment about how single-family homes And single family neighborhoods are kind of harder for the city to support. They're maybe not super tax efficient. But at the same time, that kind of goes back in that category of if the single family, I mean, obviously, that's the suburban development preferred format. And we've seen in other cities where there's a lot of opposition to multifamily housing. But I think the reason for that is You know, it's the single-family homes that attracted them to the area. And seeing those homes as what they identify with and they think, OK, this is a nice area. Whereas if they were looking at five-story, I don't know, apartment buildings or something in more of an urban setting, they might think, OK, I tried to move away from that. That's why I don't want to see that. And then I'll tie these comments to the future land use map, which is I know that it's not gospel, the future land use map, as we start to work on it. But it is important because I think as people decide to make an investment in our community, both as a resident or a developer, that land use map gives them an idea of where we as a community and a city see the development going and what character, what type of development. And I've heard those comments from the public before, which is, hey, before I bought my house or my property, I looked at that map to see, am I going to be next to whatever, commercial, industrial? And so it does inform people's decisions. And I know we need to be flexible, but at the same time, That is our broad map. It may not be the triptych, but it's at least our...

I want to piggyback on what Chuck's saying, too. When we go through this process, if we just get that public engagement of identifying the adjacencies of multifamily next to single family next to commercial, because like tonight I heard, we need more commercial, more walkable spaces, but then we'll get applications and we'll have public hearings, and we get a lot of NIMBY speak in here, you know, like we need multifamily, I'm not against multifamily, but just not right here. We get that a lot, and so it'd be nice if there was a way to engage the community, because I sat up here and said, okay, well, if not here, then where? And we just get a lot of blank stares, because no one wants to say where it goes, but if we could somehow get that engagement, then... So everyone can be on board of where these areas are because, again, we get all these public hearings that come in and people say, I'm not against it, but just not right here. It just so happens to be behind their subdivision.

I will say I had a little bit of an ulterior motive with the second half of this because you'll notice that there are different types of housing. And one of the big things I kind of wanted to hone in on with that is that I think when people think of certain typology of housing, whether it's a duplex or a triplex or an apartment building, an image pops to mind. That image is not always what it has to be. So I think, I don't know if you've looked at the latter half yet, but once you get there, you might see what I'm referring to. There's a lot of different ways to do the same thing. I think at least in the communities that I've worked in, and I can't speak to Spring Hill specifically because I haven't seen an apartment, like a multi-family application come before them yet. In the other communities I've worked in, a lot of the folks that come out in opposition may not realize the potential of what that could look like. They kind of hear multi-family or apartments or something that kind of sets off a concern, a fear for their community and for the character they have kind of invested themselves into, but it doesn't always have to be oppositional. It doesn't always have to be incompatible. So I think the way that our built environment is set up can promote that.

Yeah, I think to piggyback on that as well as this, it becomes an education component because I feel like so many individuals that come here just have no clue what's going on or why it's happening. I think a lot of individuals think we sit up here, we just willy-nilly pass what we like and don't like, and that's not the case. We are stewards of the comp plan. That's what we go by. We don't always agree with the comp plan either, but that is what we are tied to until we get an updated comp plan. So I think a large part of this community outreach is just that community education aspect of it as well. Yeah, absolutely.

Comp plan plus 13 other criteria.

Yeah.

Yeah, what was it, land use 101?

You can thank Overland Park for that one. You'll get into the golden standards. Yeah, that's not us.

So speaking of Overland Park, they have Vision Metcalf. It's an architectural overlay district. Is that something we'll be able to discuss and get into a little bit, like if we want to look at Webster and downtown and all that?

Yeah, I would think so. I think that... That would be perhaps one of the implementation strategies of, you know, we want, you know, if that's identified as a desire to have maybe Webster be a more cohesive design urban feel, then one of those implementation strategies may be, which I already am trying to plan for, is update your whole zoning code because it's way outdated. But another one could be do sub-area plans for, the northeast portion, the southeast portion, northwest, whatever is deemed appropriate, and maybe specific corridors. Do an overlay zone with design standards and maybe some specific use standards so that not everybody has to do a protected overlay or a planned development. Especially in areas that we want to encourage certain types of development We should you know, it's best if the city removes barriers to the development that the community decides it wants And not necessarily to do the opposite which is to make development We don't want put in too many roadblocks but you know really incentivize the development that we want to put into the community and Make that easier to develop

So Mike, to add to what you said or to build on that, one of the things I've seen on Facebook over the years that just comes up all the time, when can we get more restaurants? And I was thinking of that in your presentation where you were reiterating that the city doesn't make these developments and the city doesn't build restaurants. And I heard you mention tax incentives. And just hearing you speak now, I kind of wonder if we did do some sort of a vision corridor, if we start to really communicate to the development community, this is what we're looking for. Or are there other things we can do to attract restaurants specifically? And I know in the past I've always heard, well, we've got to get to 10,000 residents, and that's kind of the magic number.

In 20 years, I've never heard that. So I don't know why that was funny. I think a lot of somebody may have said something one time and then it gets, you know, misconstrued or, you know, the game of telephone that for years. Yeah. Who did we have like as a whole? I, I've not heard that. Um, I, you know, I've, I've worked in larger cities and I don't think there's ever been a, once you get to X population, then you can get a grocery store. Hey, once you get there, then maybe a, Academy Sports will look at you, but I don't think that the retailers necessarily I mean Lewisburg has a McDonald's I Don't believe they're over 10,000 Right, so there is no magic number What we try to do in economic development is look at the retailer specific criteria I think I believe I mentioned it once that Starbucks has a weird requirement that you can't make more than three right turns into a property or they won't go there and There are certain retailer things specific. They want to be on a high density or a high traffic corridor. And that's one of their factors. It's very proprietary. But the retail follows rooftops. It also follows planned rooftops. Certain retailers want to be near a high school. That's a cash cow for certain convenience store type users. I know my son spends all my money at Quick Trip. And so certain, you know, I don't think there's a magic one size fits all approach to getting more businesses other than I do know that the retailers are, they look at population numbers, they look at traffic counts, some of the, you know, and it's been said for years, location, location, location, and retail follows rooftops. It's also a timing issue. And, you know, they draw you know, radiuses and trade areas around their businesses. And they often don't want to put in a new one if it's going to take away from a business or take away from the customer base of an existing business until there's enough population in the area for a new one to kind of even it out. And so I don't know if there's a magic threshold of population that we're going to get to. We're over 10,000 people, you know, by the census estimate from last year. We're only at 10,777. But that was a year ago already, and the census is historically low. So I wouldn't be surprised if we're over 11,000 now, if not more. So I think they're looking at the developments that have been approved. We get requests for those all the time. And they're waiting until those developments move from approved to under construction. Because then it helps minimize that risk. So there's a lot of different reasons. I think there's things we can do as a city based upon this comprehensive plan and not just wait until then, but and, you know, get some diagnosis from retailers, from consultants and says, or certain software programs that we can use to identify those gaps, see where the Spring Hill residents and community members and county residents are going to shop for groceries and for auto parts or where they're going to get sporting goods, where they're going to the dentist. What daycare do they take their kids to all of those different uses there's their software that that uses our wonderful phones to track us That that can give us that data and so what that can do is then tell staff Here's where we should go target some of these retailers. There's a big gap I think Spring Hill does needs to do a better job of promoting itself and every interaction that a potential business can have when they come to Spring Hill is they wanna go where they're gonna be welcome as well. They wanna go where the city is friendly towards business and where they believe that it's gonna be a good spot for their business. And so I think all of that, helps dictate where these different businesses go. But incentives can be used to kind of kickstart a certain area of town or a certain desirable element of the community that maybe we don't have as much of, like employment or certain types of employment or retail, shopping centers. Or if the city wants to help incentivize a luxury multifamily type development or a luxury single family type development, then You know, that's where it makes the developer more attracted to come here, is that the city, you know, is saying, we want this. We could wait to get, you know, kind of the average development, but if we want quality, then we need to be willing to kind of show that to these developers until such time that we're attractive enough that they're gonna come here on their own.

Well, a few years ago, You remember, there was a Daylight Donuts we approved in a little Mexican restaurant up here close to 223rd on Webster, where that open land is. And I guess they backed out. I don't know if it was the investment or what. We weren't really told what happened, but we approved it. And so a lot of times, I don't think the public's like, Josh brought up a good point. I don't know if the public understands that a lot of times the landowner's involved, right? They have a lot of rights. The developer might buy the land from the landowner. There might be an investor come in and buy with the developer, buy the land. They might propose to buy the land and not buy it yet and try to develop before they buy the land. There's so many what ifs there that I don't think the public, like the city has very little to do with that, right? So it's like, I don't think they completely understand all that. But we've seen about anything and everything, you know, as far as that goes.

Yeah.

I think a great example of this is back in Lee's summit. Um, there was an approved, uh, Dunkin' Donuts and everybody was very excited about it. It was the first one in Lee's summit. They, uh, got, you know, entitlement approval, you know, zoning, PDP, all of that, got their permits issue, got all the way up to opening, had the signs up, owner suddenly died, unexpected. The family didn't want to move forward with the business and it sat vacant. None of those things are in the city's control. But things can happen. Yeah, there's a lot of different ways that things can go.

I do think that's important to talk with the public about because I don't think they understand all of those details, right? How a developer plays into the owner and investor. Absolutely.

I've got a question. Can I come back up again?

Come on up.

I'm sitting here thinking about some of this stuff and the economic development of the town. Jason O'Kane, 18804.

Thank you, Jason.

So we talk about economic development of Spring Hill. We talk about character development of Spring Hill. Land is a premium. Spring Hill only has so much land. to get away or to give away to zones and stuff like that so when we're looking at developing the land are we also looking at the economic costs of what that developed land is going to bring to the city you know if we decide to use the land here for certain you know single-family housing Would it be better use as some type of other land when we look at property taxes or taxes that the city is going to be able to bring in? Is that also in consideration when you guys are looking at developing these zoning stuff?

It definitely goes into the creation of a comprehensive plan. We specifically put in our request for proposals to have some market analysis done. Land use economics to talk about return on investment dollars and what different types of development patterns yield and can help I've I've seen some plans be so aspirational that it's not realistic in any way I've also seen some plans completely undersell the possibility of what a city can be and so we don't feel it's appropriate in my opinion and we'll see what the consultant says in the public to plan to come up with things that are just not likely going to happen in our city or anywhere around us or things, or just base our whole plan on landing the next huge Shields soccer complex, baseball complex, and hotel mixed use, or the next Chief's training facility 15, you know, or 50 years from now or something like?

Yeah, you know, I think I understand that. Spring Hill's not going to attract that kind of, you know, development, at least not anytime soon or ever possibly. But, you know, when you look at developing and zoning a certain area and you're like, we want this to be residential, what factors goes into that is that, Do you look at the economic standpoint, like you said, the market analysis of is this land, is this the best use of the land for the city, or is this just what everybody wants?

You know what I mean? The thing to remember, though, there is that unless the city owns that land, it's not up to the city in terms of... the city is just responding to what development that the private landowner is proposing.

Correct, but it can be zoned for residential or zoned for commercial.

And those zonings can be changed, right? Yeah, but that's all driven by a developer.

Driven by the owner.

By the owner of the land. The owner of the land of what it's zoned as. And what they want to do. But within the framework of our future land use map and the comprehensive plan, Um, but, but yeah, this, I mean, and now the city own the land, that's a different discussion where the, then the city could pick and choose like, okay.

Well, so here's my question is how do we come up with a comprehensive plan of how we want to develop the city if we can't even decide what's going to even go or things are going to go if the landowners are the ones that can be responsible for it. That's why it's a framework.

A lot of it's already zoned right now, right?

Correct.

So some of it can be, the new stuff can be. in the comprehensive plan. We can change some things in there, but not a lot because it depends on the owner of the land.

Or the land of what they want to do with that zone.

I'm not sure exactly how much we can change from existing.

Well, in a lot of ways, from the developers that I have met with and heard speak, developers like to minimize risk and want to know And so depending upon the development and the land and their vision, they may have a higher tolerance for risk. And to come in and say, you know, this may be zoned for single-family homes, but we don't feel that's appropriate. We could do something really cool here, and we're willing to take on that risk that we know it's not in conformance with the comprehensive plan, and maybe the property's not zoned for it. We're willing to take that risk. Sometimes developers don't want to have risk They want to know that the future land use map calls for it The zoning is in place because then it starts to remove that that pyramid of discretion that I talked about If if it's zoned appropriately if it's comp if it meets the comprehensive plan and their development meets all of the city's codes and regulations There's there's not as much element or ability of the city to Say no per se than if it's not in conformance with the comp plan.

So if a comp plan for a residential zoned area were to, let's say, let's just go up one zoning and go with maybe they want to be a commercial, some type of commercial district. outside of that. So if a developer wants to, Hey, I want to change this, even though it's in your comprehensive plan, this is what you guys want. I want to take a risk and develop a commercial property here. I want to get it rezoned. That's the flexibility that you're talking about. That's what the city would have to go. Yeah. We want to, we want to let them take that risk because that would be more economic to us for that same property. Cause if you, you know, like my, just, If you took my neighborhood, for example, we have roughly 192 homes in there, and looking at my tax bill, which I think should be paying for a lot of stuff around here, I mean, our development itself is well over a million dollars in property taxes, just in our development. If you took that same plot of land and a developer wanted to develop it into a commercial district, would that be... more property taxes and more revenue for the city. I don't know. I'm ignorant, so that's why I'm asking. Would that be a thing?

It is a thing, but we also have to kind of come back to what the guiding criteria are that we can actually make zoning-based decisions off of. So when somebody comes in for a rezoning request, there are a prescriptive set of guidelines that we can consider rezoning under, specifically that the Planning Commission can consider and City Council. Those are set in forth by the state. There is a case law called Golden v. Overland Park. I kind of alluded to it earlier. Back in the 70s, a gentleman sued the city of Overland Park saying that they denied a rezoning request based off of something that was immaterial. It wasn't relevant to his property. So the Supreme Court of Kansas came down and said, yeah, you're right. You have to follow these standards for rezoning. As far as I'm aware, I don't believe that one of them is explicitly the economic return on a property. We have the standards listed out in our zoning code, and they're also available. They're called the golden standards. But that's why the comprehensive plan is only one thing that's considered. That's one of the standards. It's what's the future land use designation for this property. There's also other things. How does it fit in with the neighborhood? How are negative externalities mitigated? There's a lot of things that kind of play into it. So long way to answer your question, yes but no. We do consider it, but it's not one of the guiding criteria. We can't make a decision saying, Because it's more economically advantageous to go with commercial and residential, we're going to do it. That wouldn't be allowed.

I think explaining that to people going forward when you guys are talking to people in these community events and things like that, understanding that that this could be a thing, that this could happen, and explain that to them, that this is, and you tried to do that a lot with your presentations here, that it's gonna be more of a flow than a set thing, because a lot of people probably won't understand that. you know, so I was just curious on what factors factored into the zoning and what you guys, you know, when a new, um, zoning request comes up, is that something you guys factor into? I mean, does it, do you go, well, no, we kind of wanted that residential. We don't really want to do that commercial. And then, well, the money for the city would actually be better if we, went to the commercial and stuff like that. So I'm just kind of curious where the balance of that is and what your guys' thoughts and plans. And I'm sure it's just going to be a case-by-case basis. You can't really do a broad spectrum of this is how it is.

Well, I mean, it is a case-by-case basis. I mean, there's a development that we approved many years ago. It seems like at least six. which is right past Quick Trip on Webster. That's been approved for some apartments and some commercial along Webster. Yeah, what's going on with that? Well, the guy hasn't started.

And he may end up selling it now. The investor backs out for some reason.

I guess it's their land. It can be what they want with it, right? Yeah. They buy it. So, okay. They decide not to. Curious, I was just thinking about that when we were talking about stuff, so. Thank you.

Thanks, Jason. Come on. Good discussion. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, we don't have anything more formal to present or discuss, so, you know, if there's any other questions or feedback or...

Can you share with us the next critical dates on your timeline for the comprehensive plan as far as the selection process?

I think the biggest thing that will be of note is probably the contract presentation date because we're going to make a selection on the applicant.

June 1st was the original.

The original date. Close to that. In all likelihood, it'll probably be by the end of the week of June 1st. Because of some scheduling issues, we are just being able to start doing interviews next week. So it depends on where our schedules fall. But the big deadline that we're wanting to make sure that we hit is that June, I think it's 25th, June 25th city council date for getting that sent out for contract. Everything up before then can probably be a

flex but yeah that's the hard deadline that we've set for ourselves and we've been on keeping with that that's great and the kickoff was july 1st yeah that's great that's what we're aiming for i mean there it may be fluid in there that was kind of a rough thing um so far we're we're hopefully going to have some consultants that can meet our schedule in terms of coming in and having interviews with us and things of that nature. Um, but ideally we, we still hit that July 1st kickoff date and we really hit the ground running. Um, I'm encouraged by the proposals that I have read and I think we're, we're going to be very pleased with, with the, we are already pleased with the options that we have and the firms that have applied. their qualifications, their work history, it was very encouraging to see. It's always a little bit of a letdown when you only get one or two, and it kind of limits options. I think we have very good options.

Mike, are we going to be able to see some of those options without knowing who the firm is just so we can give our take and two cents on it before the final determination is made? It's so interwoven. Okay.

Yeah. I think earlier, Travis, though, we were kind of told that it's really up for the city staff to make this decision, unless I misunderstood your question.

Yeah, I think that's the way we're proposing it and that we will interview Multidisciplinary group here at the city is going to interview the consultants not I'm just gonna be who I think is best And then we'll pick one that we think really is has the qualifications, has the capacity, that's a big one, is that they actually have the ability to deliver on the timeline and the scope of work and that we are a priority for their work and we're not an afterthought. And then somebody who has a track record, we can go look at plans that they have done, cities, smaller cities, cities that are in a growth pattern, things of that nature. So we're pretty confident that we're gonna be able to do that and bring it forward. and then present that contract to the city council at the end of June. I think we have feedback about what we are not looking for and some of the cautionary tales of what we would like to avoid this time. So there's definitely some learning opportunities, but I have all the faith that we'll be able to do that.

Once we finish this process, we know there's a great comp plan finished and everything. Are we going to have a plan to revisit it every couple of years or have a contract with that consultant or a consultant or someone just so we don't go another 16 years without revisiting it? Like, I mean, I don't want to like take a deep breath. Like we're done. Like I want to be okay. Let's start looking at the next update in a few years. so we don't find ourselves in this position again. So I just want to make sure we have some sort of plan even after we finish this one.

Yeah, that's a key component of the implementation strategies is, you know, any good scientific review, you do your hypothesis, you do the experiment, you collect the data, you formulate your summary, and then you go back and review it to make sure that it's actually working that way. I think oftentimes with a comprehensive plan, that can get lost. And either it's because nobody really liked the comprehensive plan that got approved, or it was just such an arduous task and there was not good compromise done and collaboration and consensus building. And so some people just write it off immediately and just Disregard it because it may not say exactly what they liked and so I agree with you We want to have a comprehensive plan that we can go back and see if some of our strategies are working Because if we're just constantly changing things without seeing if they're working or not Then we don't know if what we tried is actually working or not and so I that's is going to be an integral part of what we're looking for and Well, we appreciate everybody that attended. We appreciate the people that participated online. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you guys for your presentation.

Have an awesome weekend, everybody.

See you later.