Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

The Stillwater Planning Commission meeting of November 18th will now come to order. It will be the process this evening to call for items on the agenda. The commission will hear briefly from staff first, then the applicant and/or their representative, then open the public hearing and hear from those in favor and/or in opposition to the request. When you come to the podium, please clearly state your name and address for the record. Then before closing the public hearing, both staff, the applicant and/or their representative will be provided an opportunity to respond to provide additional information and answer questions. After all interested parties have spoken, the public hearing will be closed. We will hear closing remarks and alternatives from staff. Okay. The first item under public hearings this evening is to um get a receive comment regarding the approval and adoption of the update to the city's comprehensive plan. and we shall hear from staff.

Good evening, planning commission chair. My name's Henry Bubbleheimer with development services and tonight we're here to talk about the Envision Stillwater Comprehensive Plan 2045. Um so to present this plan, um I'm going to have our consultants come up. We have Don Thomas and Jake Lange with Rhysa Nichols. I'll let them kind of introduce theirelves and give you a brief overview of the comp plan and then I'll come back at the end to give you those alternatives and if you have any questions. Good evening. Gonna tag team this a little bit tonight. So, all right, we'll get started. Thank you all very much for being here and having us.

Oh, how's that? Oh, wow. That's better. I can hear myself better now. Yeah, that's great.

Okay. Um, thank you all so much for being here. We are really pleased to be at this point. This is a big milestone for this project. And so, um, as Henry mentioned, my name is Don Thomas. I'm an urban planner with Frieza Nichols. Uh, we've been working with the city on this project for approximately two years. Um the team of course includes Jake Lange who's here as one of the primary project planners who helped to develop the content of this plan and you've seen him most likely if you've attended any of the public activities or steering committee meetings relative to the project. Um so um as mentioned we're going to provide you an overview of the project just to sort of introduce it. Um we're going to review the chapters of the plan um at a high level to give you just a flavor of what each contains and how that all kind of came together as the comprehensive plan update. Um we'll talk a little bit about the um public engagement, the con the way that we engaged the public, the tools that we used and the type of feedback that we received. And then we'll go through the chapters like I said talk about the the goals and some action items relative to each sort of how that evolved um and specifically ending in uh a discussion about the implementation chapter which of course is how this thing gets actually activated upon adoption um if we get to that point. So uh then we'll talk about next steps but just getting started with the document itself. Envision Stillwater 2045 is the updated comprehensive plan. It has eight chapters. You see here that they start with sort of an introduction and what we call a community snapshot um and then goes through sort of the core contents of the plan document itself which you know starts with land use, transportation and housing, the main elements of a community. Um then the

other components of economic development uh community character and infrastructure which of course support all of the the main components as well. And then there's an implementation section that provides guidance for accomplishing the big picture of the plan which is stated in the vision statement. Um and I know y'all can read but I'm going to read it for you anyway. um because this one took a little while to craft and it does provide the north star for the plan itself. Uh so Still Water is an innovative community that deeply cares for one another, cultivating a strong sense of belonging. It's a desirable destination for residents, visitors, and businesses, cherishing deeprooted connections, prioritizing education, and radiating a warm, friendly character. So hopefully you will see how the various pieces of the plan feed up into supporting this vision statement. That's also done through these four established guiding principles. Um the guiding principles are a way to ensure that um we're taking the components of that vision statement. Um providing a little bit of direction and and action to them um but basically giving a little bit more of a description as to how we can accomplish the vision and um and what are the core values that the community holds um that are that are commonly believed without within um Still Water. So Still Water is a safe, convenient, and easy to and is easy to navigate for all. That's the connect Still Water. It talks about not just being connected with regard to your street network, but also having social connections, um being able to access the community in through all different means of transportation, whether that's bike, walking, vehicles, whatever you whatever type of micromobility you might want or need. um it's mentioned in there, but again the connect still water also talks about

your social connections and how the various um groups and individuals within the community um stay connected and work together. Um Thrive Stillwater is really um kind of based in an economic development ele component but it is also talking about social responsibility, resilience um both economic as well as resources and um resiliency overall. We talked some, in fact, had um a specific conversation with the steering committee about hazards and just a community being able to bounce back better when it suffers some type of um shock or stress. And so resiliency was is sort of thematic throughout the plan. Um but also creating opportunities for people to um engage in a healthy lifestyle if they so choose and supporting public health within the community overall. uh realize Stillwater. This is um sort of about the vision and goals, but it's also about community identity um establishing policies um programs and regulations that can help to um oh sorry I jumped ahead to identity. realize Still Water is more about um establishing those programs, the things that the city does best like develop regulatory controls, policies, uh make sure that the community has the necessary infrastructure that is uh required in order to support the kind of development that is desired in different locations throughout the community. So all of those things come together and provide sort of the framework so that you can realize the plan and um and accomplish the goals. And then identify Still Water where it was sort of going before is more about um how Still Water sees itself um and projects an image to the broader community and to visitors. Um there are a lot of unique qualities within the city that we tried to ensure

had a place to be recognized as well as the elements of you know advancing those types of of unique characteristics. Uh so that's that's one of the things that you you you'll always have that's customized for Still Water. And so some of that has to do with um gateways and entrances and signage and how the city brands itself. Um, some of it has to do with the cultural institutions and organizations that can be found here and how that presents unique opportunities for uh, residents and guests. So, the way that we got to those foundational elements of a vision statement and um, a set of guiding principles was really based upon sort of the progression of the timeline of the project. And so what you see here um this graphic identifies the various phases of the project beginning with initiation and early public engagement in phase one. So that happened um with some in-person activities as well as an online survey. The largest part of the project of course and what spent what we spent the most time on was the plan development itself. So phase two um there was a and I me I mentioned the survey but there was also a project website that's been active throughout the duration of the planning process. Um phase three was really getting to refinement of the project looking specifically and focusing on the implementation chapter which we'll talk about and making sure that there are um actionable steps that support the various chapters of the plan and then moving into the final phase of adoption. So that's we're here. Um using the same timeline uh we also engaged in um various types of um outreach. So we had a comprehensive plan advisory committee. We met with that committee five times throughout the course of the project. um

beginning uh with a visioning session very early on and uh then moving to uh resiliency and housing conversation and talking more about um oh I've got to got to look at my list because marked it down goals goals development that's the one I always forget so resiliency and housing in the second CPAC meeting setting goals for each of the plan chapters u working together to to identify those in the third CPAC meeting um The fourth one, after we conducted a land use workshop with the community, uh we brought back scenarios that the um advisory committee helped us to hone together to craft a single future land use plan uh scenario. And then the last uh meeting with the um advisory committee was really focused on implementation and working through the prioritization of various action steps that are recommended by the plan. Um, so taking that kind of to the numbers, when we conducted in-person engagement, and this is aside from working with the steering committee, the initial public openhouse back in February of 23, sorry, 24. I'm always going to mess my dates up. That's why Jake's here. Um, February of 24, we we had really great turnout. We got probably more than 80 people. 80 people signed up on our sign-in sheets to come and look at um boards, provide input, just learn a little bit about the planning process and contribute their their feedback. The land use workshop mid project, didn't get as much of the um input that we really kind of wanted, but we also put that up on the project website and continued to take feedback through the online portal and through some interactive map information. So, the final public open house, we had um a decent number of folks show up. We did that out at um block 34, which was

pretty special. I think it was really nice to to get to experience that space. Uh because it was under construction throughout the entirety of the project until right right here at the end. Um some online engagement activities. Um and these again kind of speak to all of the information as the project progressed. We updated and continued to provide information online. Uh the community level survey um garnered about 540 online responses. Um more than 130 interactive map notes. So there's a a mapping feature on the website where people could put a marker on the map and tell us what they think about a certain location whether it's good, bad, or otherwise. We also had what we call an ideas wall. And that was just a completely free form opportunity for people to provide their comments and questions. Uh so we kept those active throughout the entirety of the project and updated them as we had new information and um activities for people to participate in. So before I move into the community snapshot, um the other thing that I just observed and I think you'll see it kind of throughout the project as we present the different plan chapters, the folks in Stillwater that participated that we learned from um really came at this from a practical point of view. Um we said dream big. They said, you know, we really want our streets fixed. Um we said dream big. They said, "We want to make sure everybody has, you know, adequate water and wastewater services." Um, we said, "Dream big." And they said, "We really like Still Water. We don't want to change it a whole lot, but we want more places maybe to gather as a community." So, we we tried to ensure that we were respectful of the voices that we heard um but also wanted people to, you know, think about how that can stretch into a bigger vision. So that's that's kind of how the vision and some of those

foundational elements of the plan evolved. Um, but it was really it was interesting to just understand sort of the personality of Still Water. And I mean some communities are like, "Yeah, we want to build a whole new city hall and we're going to move downtown to another part of the city and all of these things are going to change." But um, for the most part, people in the community felt like things are probably going in a decent direction. They don't want to, you know, massive changes, but they do want to see improvements and they want to see things that are going to benefit them over time. Um, so hopefully that is properly reflected through uh the plan information that we're going to share with you next. The first chapter of the plan is called a community snapshot. This is the contents of that chapter. It provides just an overview. It goes into the history of Stillwater, the demographics, um what we call that basically existing conditions, um look at the economics that are in place here. And I will say within um the team for this project, we also had um an economic development specialist as well as a housing specialist. So one of the appendices of your plan document is the entirety of a housing assessment. And so that's um a piece that informed both the demographics as well as the housing chapter of the plan. [snorts] Um the economic development chapter [clears throat] of the plan reflects the the additional study that was conducted for a market analysis and understanding kind of where the gaps are and what the opportunities are with regard to economic development. But here in the um snapshot you basically get an existing conditions report uh understanding what the physical characteristics and environmental constraints are. Uh what existing plans are in place have been adopted by the community and um then also a recap of the vision and guiding principles and public engagement. All right. Now I'm going to let Jake

take you through some of these other chapters.

Thanks Don. So yeah, um now that we had that understanding, that foundational knowledge that we needed to gather and analyze for the community snapshot, we were able to begin developing these kind of substantive plan chapters. The first of which and one of the most important of which is land use and development. Uh the basic contents of this are first uh an analysis of your existing land use patterns. We then have some content that describes the process by which we went and built the future land use plan that you see later in this chapter. kind of the population projections we did that we needed to account for in our proposed uh areas for maybe more moderate density housing, more higher density housing, things of that nature. Um and how we developed the land use scenarios through that workshop back in September of 2024. Um this then contains a town and gown assessment. Every chapter from here on out contains that something that explores the unique relationship between the city and the university and the impacts it has on this realm of planning. So OSU being a major landholder and and likely continuing to to own more in the future, uh making sure we're accounting for for that unique relationship. Uh resilience is also a component of every chapter of your plan. Uh making sure that in this case we understand how you can use land use planning to support other investments and planning efforts built to make the city, as Don said, better withstand and recover from both long-term stressors and acute shocks like natural disasters. Uh then towards the end of this chapter, you get what we call future land use dashboards. It's kind of like a one-page summary uh of each different future land use category. It describes uh the types of activities, types of development you expect to see there, the sort of anticipated approximate density uh and give some visual representations of roughly what we think that type of land use might look like. Uh we then have the future land use map itself and a description of some emerging kind of trends and best practices. what we heard from the community on this. Um you see first at the left there's some quotes that kind of give you some some human insight into what people were saying but uh I really am maybe a data data focused guy. And so what we see on the right here um first

people recognize the importance of both mixed use and infill development to the future growth of Still Water. Mixed use mostly in those targeted appropriate areas that are already familiar with it like downtown. um and infill. Uh again, a notable majority of folks understood that uh building in areas that are already pretty developed, already built up, finding those opportunities where there's existing infrastructure and services uh is going to be pretty critical going forward. What you see on the right is also particularly interesting for land use. You have two questions there that we asked in the online survey about people's access to both public and private amenities. So things like parks and gathering spaces as well as things likearmacies, clinics, coffee shops to hang out at, tailor, things of that nature. Uh and in each case you see that the majority or at least plurality of people do want convenient proximity and access to those services. So that informs how you want to allocate these land uses through the community. So this led us to the development of this set of goals for this chapter and the things we want to achieve for your future land use planning. The first is to use land efficiently. It's uh not necessarily strictly finite resource but a very precious resource and uh it determines the fate of your ability to house people to generate sales tax revenue to provide quality of life amenities. Uh so we want to make sure that we're allocating things correctly. Um and to that point of infill development capitalizing on the infrastructure assets the city already owns. Um planning for a walkable still water is something that you're going to see recur a couple of times throughout this because uh it's interwoven through what we need to achieve in a lot of these chapters. Um, and in the case of land use, you know, if you have all of your commercial development on this side of town and all of your residential development on this side of town, even if there's a sidewalk or a trail between them, if it's 10 miles away, it's not really a viable alternative to get from A to B by walking. Uh, so how you create your land use pattern has big impacts on walkability. We also want to use our uh land use planning efforts to support the economic growth of the city and make sure that uh again some of it's about allocation making sure that people can

access businesses also making sure that you have the right uh dedication of land uses to things like professional or industrial employment that you create opportunity to build and bring in investment that creates jobs. Uh in the case of supporting iconic destinations and creating new iconic destinations potentially uh you'll see how that comes through especially in that community character arts and culture chapter um where again creating these right land uses things like proposing mixeduse development here surrounded by moderate intensity uh residential or things of that nature. uh you can really lean into the key districts that the city already has that has have these unique identities uh and support them as walkable kind of vibrant nodes and and really enhance the the vibrancy and the livability and the quality of life that way. Uh and then a major component of implementing this chapter in particular is preparing for modern regulations. Uh creating new zoning and subdivision regulations in particular are a major way that you make the rubber hit the road when it comes to land use planning. So transportation and mobility is our next chapter. uh we again start with an existing conditions assessment. Uh we also looked at the existing kind of transportation planning efforts uh other plans that have been adopted in the past that informed uh the standards and the the objectives we had here before providing a roadway network and thoroughfare plan. Now this does not change the standards to which developers are beholden when they're constructing like a new subdivision. It does not change the standards to which the city is beholden in terms of its street sections or anything like that overnight. The the construction standards don't change. Uh this provides a a goal, a conceptual framework for where we want new roadway classifications to be applied. Um and provides some best practices or insights into best practices for things like street crosssections and design. Uh we also looked into the supporting network, your active transportation, sidewalks, bike lanes, trails. Uh tried to make sure we had a good understanding of what's on the ground today uh for that part of the infrastructure network. Um and then we also looked at the cross-section of housing and transportation. And that affordability index is some research that's already been done um outside of of FNI that we

were able to incorporate here uh to really understand uh how these two major components of the cost of living uh are are sort of shaping up here in Still Water. There's a lot of conversations about housing affordability, but owning a car can be very expensive and also not owning a car can be very expensive depending on your circumstances. So, we wanted to make sure that we were responsive to uh each of those components of what what what makes a community affordable. Uh like everything else, a town and gown assessment was pretty critical here. You have uh public transportation in Still Water that's achieved through a partnership with OSU. So we wanted to make sure we were uh lending credence to that um and and understanding what opportunities there are to continue to leverage that uh or move in a different direction. We described that kind of approach that we took to form all of this and then again have a conversation around how you can make transportation and still water resilient, how you can make sure that people and goods can move freely around the city by various modes even under changing circumstances. So what we heard here um by and large uh people think that there are probably uh some opportunities to improve things like your sidewalks, bike paths, and trails. Whether that's accessibility like proximity to where they live or quality like maintenance. Um people weren't necessarily super sure whether public transit was serving the needs of the community effectively. That's probably because a lot of our respondents have never taken the bus. Um despite that, uh there was a decent amount of support for uh continuing to invest in public transit. again, whether that's leveraging that existing relationship or looking into new alternatives. Um, and there was uh pretty overwhelming support for uh continued expansion and improvement of that pedestrian and bike infrastructure. People want to be able to walk around, bike around, not have to take a car if they don't want to. And when it came to uh investment in the roadways, one of the most interesting things here is that the primary thing people wanted to see was repair and reconstruction. So, not necessarily building a whole lot of new assets, but more of a fix it first attitude. take what we've got and make sure that it's performing the way we want it to. Um, which we think is also a financially responsible way to treat your infrastructure. So, we were happy to hear the community uh shared that view

when it came to the goals we crafted based on what we learned here. Uh, we were just talking about fix it first. So, maintain that existing infrastructure. Make sure what you've got is serving your needs appropriately. Kind of part and parcel with that before you go about, you know, expanding capacity for traffic that may not even be there yet. um managing the traffic that you have efficiently through uh appropriate studies, analysis, and then construction or installation of things like signalization, things like changes to your uh access management and driveway standards that can impact traffic mobility. Um making sure that people that are on the road today basically can get around effectively before we start uh adding adding to our roadway miles. Um we also want to serve citizens with transit. Now, we don't explicitly put forward that the city uh should uh uh create its own independent public transit system. We think it's important that the conversation evolves over the planning horizon of Envision Stillwater 2045 to understand how to best leverage that existing relationship with OU and understand if needs can or cannot be met. What's that?

Did I say something else? I'm sorry. OSU. [laughter] My apologies. I am I'm I'm an enemy from down south. I'm I'm sorry. I promise. Uh OSU. Leverage that relationship with OSU. Um or if other options need to be explored. It's basically about continuing to study that and understand how to best meet everybody's needs. Um, activating transportation is responsive to uh the feedback we've just been describing about people wishing to be able to walk and bike more effectively, wanting more access to that sort of infrastructure. So, supporting those options for people through continued investment in those modes is going to be critical. And then anticipate and adapt. It's a little bit uh nebulous in that name, but what we're describing there is keeping a breast of the most current and kind of cutting edge in uh uh transportation and and microobility technologies. Things like your ride share technologies, things like microobility, things like uh you know, adaptive parking management systems, anything you can do uh that leverages kind of the best tech available to minimize congestion without necessarily having to uh make major capital investments in in roadways, housing, and neighborhoods. So, this is a chapter that is supported, as Don mentioned, by CDS's housing assessment. That's about a 90page document that uh is is predicated on uh engagement and stakeholder interviews that CDS undertook in addition to the engagement we did um and their own market analyses that help understand and describe uh what that future demand is going to look like in terms of housing price points that are going to be need going to be needed, total housing units that are going to be needed, the different tenures like ownership versus rental that are going to be needed. It's a it's a very thorough report that can uh inform a lot of planning decisions moving forward. Um that informs this chapter as we assess that existing housing stock, describe kind of neighborhood completeness, uh understanding what that term might mean and what people uh want to see in terms of a complete neighborhood uh describing that future demand. And then again, how do we build resilient housing stock? How do we build neighborhoods that have that social cohesion that we talked about with connect still water uh that is resilient to changing populations and demographics? Um and then a town and

gown assessment. You have a 25,000 approximately person university here and about 5,000 units of housing on campus. So, uh, understanding the impacts of that student population on the housing market here is something that we certainly couldn't ignore. What we heard from folks here, uh, the focus of new housing development, it's a bit diverse, but the largest single block there is medium to large lot single family detached homes, kind of your traditional suburban subdivisions. Behind that, small lot single family homes. you have some uh um you know appreciation for your kind of missing middle housing types like duplexes. Uh very little support for large apartment complexes. We had some conversations about those. Um and then an affinity for vertical mixed use. So I think people are now looking at that lens that we described earlier with mixeduse development in those districts that are accommodating to it and really wanting to lean into upper floor residential in those places that that have that kind of pattern in place. Uh we also asked about accessory dwelling units. Um this is split not right down the middle but almost evenly into quarters there where people think it should be allowed everywhere in most of the city or they just don't know. Uh but there was not a broad uh sort of consensus of people saying they should be restricted or prohibited. Uh so by and large the direction to move in there is is making ADUs something that can happen in at least most if not all of the city. That's another thing that's implemented through regulations like your zoning code. Um, we looked at these two graphs on the right earlier, but now we're recontextualizing that away from just land use and into again the definition of a complete neighborhood and what we think people are looking for in the place that they choose to live, not only their home, but their community around that. And that again comes back to convenient proximity and access to both public and private services and amenities. So before we're looking at how how that takes shape in a land use map. Now we're thinking about it in the context of how people live their day-to-day lives and uh what what people find attractive in terms of choosing a neighborhood to live in. That turned into these goals. We've talked about promoting infill development before. People have recognized that as a critical part of how the city's going to grow. Again, it's financially

responsible by leveraging those existing infrastructure assets. uh and it's it's also likely going to continue to be more and more palatable to uh uh developers and and certainly certain certain types of developers who specialize in that product type. Uh we want to streamline that review and permitting process. That was something we heard occasionally in conversations with stakeholders in the development community. Uh, you want to make sure that you have high standards that that generate durable, aesthetically pleasing development, whether that's rehabilitation of existing housing stock or new housing, but you also don't want to create procedural roadblocks that discourage good quality investment in Still Water uh from those that want to come here, build here, or spend their money here. Diversification of the housing stock is something that's responsive to um the the actual typologies that you have. So, Still Water, like most communities in America, is very much at either end of the spectrum. You've got very low density single family detached homes that are quite proliferate and then you have some of those large apartment buildings that people don't want to see any more of. So filling in the gap, creating the units that we need is probably largely going to need to come from diversification into those middle housing types that are less common here and almost everywhere else. Things like duplexes, triplexes, town homes, ADUs, things of that nature. Um improving walkability. We've talked about it before. And now in the context of neighborhood completeness, it means not only do you have those sidewalks or trails in place, but your neighborhoods ought to be laid out in a way that you don't have to leave your culde-sac and do a 15-minute walk to get to the person that's actually right behind your house, who should take about 30 seconds to get to. Uh, so this is a that's a multifaceted one that requires various different um investments or or strategies to implement in the context of housing and neighborhoods. And then enhanced housing conditions. We had a lot of conversations about the state of housing, uh the existing housing stock in Still Water today. Uh there's older housing, housing that is dilapidated or deteriorating in some places. So understanding what mechanisms we can use to see that housing refurbished or otherwise replaced uh with newer uh kind of inshape housing as it were is something that we want to look into and make sure that the right mechanisms are

in place uh procedurally and maybe the right incentives are in place potentially. Uh that's that's an ongoing conversation as well. So economic development and redevelopment as Don mentioned we had a subconsultant that helped us write this uh TXP they specialize in this uh this realm of planning and so we did an existing conditions assessment again tried to understand the workforce the existing you know level of wealth and financial fluidity um before proposing that essentially one of the main things we need for the future of the economy in Still Water is a unique vision and goals just for this type of development. I'll explain what that means a little bit more in just a moment. Uh and then we looked at that future demand and growth in different industries before again talking about how you build an economy that is resilient through variation and isn't dependent on one industry where local, state, national or global economic shifts can completely disrupt uh the financial state of the community. And then also again exploring that relationship with the university. Over 8,000 people I believe are employed by OSU. It's the largest single employer in the community. So again, we we can't ignore the impact that has on what's going on in Still Water's economy. Um, you've seen these graphs before, but I think it's important to reiterate those uh where we look at mixed use and infill development. We've heard about them a couple of times, but when it comes to building that type of economy, there's a lot of different types of jobs and and sort of sales tax bases that you might want to look into. But one of the recommendations that came from TXP is really investigating the creation of a place-based as he calls it uh economy that's experience-driven, creating those mixeduse kind of walkable nodes where people can get out of their car, spend time, patronize a lot of different businesses uh and also those create inversely the jobs needed to staff those businesses. So that leads to this set of goals. So building that vision is a recommendation that comes in response to the fact that Still Water is in many ways at a a convenient time for a crossroads. Is it going to lean into its history as an agricultural and industrial center? That is an option, continuing to attract uh jobs in those sort of those sort of

market segments. uh might it want to invest more resources in retaining graduates from OSU and building a larger professional kind of white collar class or again does it want to invest more of those resources in those districts that retail restaurant-based economy uh that's that's built on those walkable places. We think you can do uh that one kind of regardless because it's interwoven into a lot of our other recommendations. But um understanding how to align the different partners that are going to be involved, the different stakeholders that are going to contribute resources to building that future economy of Still Water is going to be crucial. Making sure that people aren't working across purposes for industrial development versus professional development or whatever vision the city chooses to pursue. Um we've talked about building unique places. It'll also come up again in the next chapter here. Uh increasing employment overall. uh when you look at uh the the proportion of people in Still Water who live in the community and work in the community, there are a lot of folks I believe who commute out. I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head. It's it's in the plan. There's a a graphic that depicts that. But um making sure that anyone who wants to live in Stillwater hopefully also has the opportunity at least to work in Still Water and vice versa. Um so people don't have to commute in or out for their job uh is something that that we should strive to achieve as much as possible. And then investing in quality of life amenities. So this takes the form of things we'll see in the next chapter, things we've seen before about public spaces and those private amenities. Uh creating the type of city that uh people from outside of the community seeking to come and understand if they want to build a business here, bring their business here, uh bring their employees here, can come and say, "Oh, Still Water really is a great place to live. It has everything that I want to bring my employees into. They can find a place they want to live, send their kids to a good school, and have those quality of life amenities that make the day-to-day uh, you know, the kind of place you never want to leave hopefully." So that is a critical part of that economic development strategy no matter what we choose. And then community character, arts and culture. This is a fun one. We get to talk about the pretty stuff. Uh we start with urban design and placemaking and then we look at the kind of non-physical components of community character like those resources, those

cultural institutions uh and missiondriven organizations. We then have a dedicated conversation about public health. That's kind of intrinsic to a lot of our other recommendations because of the way walkability is interwoven into a lot of this, but we really highlight it here. And then we provide a review of the the different key districts, those real nodes of activity and vibrancy that we want to harness, leverage, and nourish uh going forward before describing, you know, how do you build a community whose identity and culture are resilient to change over time um but also accommodating of appropriate changes over time. That's a conversation we have there. And then of course OSU OSU football, the the town and gown relationship for the culture here is something that could not go unexplored uh no matter what direction we go uh moving forward. So that's something we also have described in this chapter. Um what we have here are a couple of again charts and graphs. I like my numbers. I like my my doughut charts. Um that are in response to questions we asked through the online survey broadly about the physical kind of look and feel and aesthetics of the community. We asked uh about the aesthetics of residential neighborhoods distinctly from commercial areas and then the city overall. We also asked about the liveless and kind of number of things to do in downtown. Uh, and then that one at the top left is about what single investment could be kind of the most impactful thing the city could do to improve that look and feel. Uh, for which most people described improved infrastructure, going back to that fix it first attitude that we're promoting. Um, but within these other ones, what you can see here from the the proliferation of that teal color is that a lot of people think the look and feel, the aesthetics are good, but that there is probably a lot of room for improvement. And so that's where the recommendations of this chapter and implementing it will come into play. The first of those is simply beautify still water. That's kind of a two-pronged recommendation. First, you want to uh do that do do that through your regulatory updates we've described before. Create a zoning and subdivision code that lends itself to highquality, durable, aesthetically pleasing development. Uh buildings that frankly just are nice to look at and will stand the test of time. Uh the second prong of that tethers into the next recommendation, which is

investing in the public realm. So, not how we govern private development, but the things that the city builds as capital assets, those parks and gathering spaces, how it invests in the streetscape and the public realm there. Making sure that it's well-maintained, aesthetically pleasing with art, with amenities like lighting, street trees, benches, uh everything that makes people want to not only pass through the public space, but spend time in it. Um, we want to unify branding and civic identity. So, this is one that's kind of already underway. Uh but making sure that all of those components of those public spaces that are um conveying that this is something the city of Stillwater owns and is doing for you has the same kind of voice behind it as it were. That also extends to things like media and other kind of uh content that the city outputs, but it applies through things like your wayfinding signage for example in the built environment. When we move beyond the physical built environment and into these uh kind of non-physical aspects of community culture, one of the things we really want to do is empower and connect local champions. This extends from a lot of what we heard with our stakeholder meetings in April of last year. We had them at other times, but we met with a lot of nonprofits, healthcare organizations, and other agencies that want to invest in the quality of life uh and and other aspects of of living in Still Water. Uh and they would like to see the city perform uh continually as a a better partner uh in helping them connect to each other, connect their resources and information with each other, and ultimately extend their reach um by by just empowering them more and more. Uh we also want to improve health outcomes. So we've talked about active transportation. This also extends to uh where you've got those parks and opportunities to exercise. It also extends to things like the economic development chapter and attracting grocery stores and businesses that can provide fresh local healthy food. Um it's a it's a multi-pronged multifaceted uh recommendation that one. But the general objective is to make sure that people live longer and stay healthier for more of their life in Still Water. And I think I'll pass it back to Don to talk about infrastructure. All right. So, we're getting to the tail

end of these chapters now, but infrastructure obviously is what supports all of the growth, development, and activity within the community. So the chapter that addresses this starts with an understanding of what existing plans um the the city has adopted and that that means the operational plans for things like water, wastewater, storm water um and also other types of policy uh framework policy policy documents that are in place that um establish the structure of of growth and development. Um so while the comprehensive plan is sort of an umbrella it we wanted to ensure that we acknowledged all of the other adopted plans they are still absolutely valid. They still carry um and by means of the comprehensive plan addressing those they are basically incorporated into the larger sort of planning framework for the city. Um so we we incorporated and some of the recommendations even pull from the um city's work relative to water, wastewater, storm water, uh master planning. Uh also looking at other types of services such as electric, internet and sanitation, making sure for the most part that we understood uh the capacity of those various systems. So where we were identifying potential growth with regard to the distribution of future land use um we wanted to understand that we could do that in a location or in locations that are already served or could be sufficiently supported by infrastructure without a tremendous amount of new investment. Um so all of the public facilities the public facilities in this instance um focused a lot on um parks. It also looked at things like um where your fire stations um library uh police station, all of those different elements of support

services for the city, where they're located, um how they're operating. We didn't do a super deep dive into that. We just wanted to understand that they have long range plans that they have, you know, a vision for the future and an understanding of what the comprehensive plan is presenting so that if there is a need to improve those services in relationship to new growth and development that everybody's aware of what that might look like. Um, and then also just sort of an assessment of uh crime and emergency services, basically fire, police, and MSA or emergency services. Um so in this regard, you know, we did get a few comments relative to um the public engagement feedback. Uh a lot of that was really very focused on making sure that there's water, sewer, streets that serve existing as well as future development. U making sure that it's consistent in the manner that the services are provided or required. Um the boards that we had at at the original open house um did also ask people to give their impression of um emergency services and um whether or not in this case there's a good variety of sort of cultural historical facilities, other parts of the the public facilities and institutions. Um and in that regard we're thinking about things like the library and other like um historical um museums and other things like that. And um on both of those the feedback was great. The the largely in agreement or in some cases somewhat neutral. The and those are the two sort of bar charts at the top um on the left hand side. The the two on the right um start to talk more about um the community centers, facilities, whether or not um gathering spaces, locations for events and conferences meet the community's needs. In that regard, there was a largely neutral response. um it's followed by uh those that agree. I I'm not sure if that would change um now that you've got block 34 up and running. There could be

some shifting in that, but that would be the one thing that I thought about like from two years ago to today. That's um that is a different sort of um circumstance for the community. Um and then city hall as a welcoming place is the last one of those bar charts. Um neutral or agree. I I think that's probably because a lot of people don't ever go to city hall. it's not a place that, you know, most citizens are going to frequent. Um, so they they know it's there. They agree that it's serving a purpose and it's functional. Um, which is great. That's that's probably all it needs to be for a good number of folks. um with regard to other feedback that we received um kind of equally divided um things that were related to infrastructure with regard to our ideas well sort of the free form comments that we collected um most were transportation related parks and wreck related and then getting into things like environmental impact water wastewater and private services. And then finally at the bottom right, we asked if there was a need for more investment with regard to the look and feel of Stillwater streetscapes. So streetscape meaning more than just this the paved surface, but also sidewalks, any landscaping and other types of um furnishings and amenities. And the the largest response was yes, that that could could bear some improvement. uh goals related to infrastructure and public um facilities really start again with maximizing your existing investments in infrastructure. So where there is existing infrastructure really focusing on development or redevelopment in locations that can benefit from that and leverage that existing asset um or understanding again how and where an extension of of utilities would be would benefit the community. Um diversifying water supply. We know that there has been concern related to ensuring that there is sufficient water supply and so there are some recommendations that talk

about redundancy and um just give some guidance for in large part it's going to point back to those master plans for the specific operational um systems uh creating nodes of public infrastructure as a goal. In this in this regard, what we're talking about is the um is leveraging opportunities for bringing together various elements of public infrastructure and facilities. So that might look like um a police substation in a park. So you already have that land. It's something that the city already um owns and is likely in proximity to a variety of different neighborhoods. So maybe that's a good opportunity to pair up various um public facilities. It could also mean more convenience for um people within those neighborhoods. And uh so the next of course is just making sure that all services can be or all levels of service can be met. You know there are there benchmarks to ensure that you're providing enough um water wastewater street capacity to meet appropriate levels of service. And so that's in this regard it's really talking about having systems in place so that you can measure the performance of that infrastructure and ensure that if there are improvements needed you're tracking it and you can identify those needs and and advance projects or programs to to address them. Um preparing for all hazards. This is the sort of resilience elements of public infrastructure and making sure that if there are natural disasters or other types of um damage that could happen within the community that there are redundancies that there are other um back uh sort of u there's back back stop I can't think of the word I'm thinking of anyway there are things in place to ensure that these systems won't completely go down that you've got

the ability to rely on other resources if necessary to get those systems back up and running in a reasonable time so that the community can move forward and recover. All right. So, how this all comes together, the final chapter is called implementation. And we've got, you know, we've talked about a variety of different goals for each of these chapters. And um where it all, you know, where the rubber hits the road quite literally is in the implementation chapter. It is intended to be crafted as a means of taking the the vision and the goals within each of these chapters and giving you specific giving the city specific action steps that can bring it to a reality bring it to um a built form. And um just in a quick review within the implementation table that is part of this chapter that's the biggest chunk of this chapter there are 84 different recommendations. Um between 15 and 20 of those recommendations are very focused on regulatory updates um specifically focused well largely focused on zoning subdivision development regulations including process. Um, there are action items that address regulations like those that I just mentioned. There action items that address capital investments and infrastructure that the city may choose to advance. Um, the recommendations regarding funding to identify funding sources and apply them to different programs and projects. Developing policies that can ensure that we're accomplishing the goals of the plan. administering the plan and ensuring that you have the efficiencies within city hall to support the different activities that are recommended and actions and then bringing together the right partnerships. This, you know, the city doesn't work in a vacuum. It's it's a lot of different moving parts and there

are a lot of different elements within the community that contribute to the success of the city as a whole. And so being able to leverage those partnerships and ensure that you're drawing the resources from the right places that can advance the city's key objectives. Um so largely what you see here is a a pretty wholesale update to your 2013 uh C3 comprehensive plan. It's been updated to reflect current existing conditions relative to demographics, um, land use, and other key elements of the city. Um, your comprehensive plan is not a regulatory document. You, you all use this probably every couple of weeks or every month as you look at development applications. So, you know this probably better than most. um it does give you the core policy support to make decisions and to act in support of the plan recommendations and the guidance that's provided within the plan. So um obviously one of the main things that you all will will work with is uh the the development regulations and the future land use map and and land use categories. Um, so we hope you've had some time or we'll take some time to look at those and just ensure that as you're thinking about development applications, this gives you the kind of information that you need in order to um make decisions on those requests as they come before you. Um, we tried to make it as straightforward as as possible so that it's something that staff can work with and provide guidance to those applicants and then get those in front of you you as a recommending body to um to disting to disseminate those decisions and move them up to the city council as necessary. But that is that is our overview of your updated comprehensive plan. We are happy to answer questions and

take this into a conversation mode if that's um if that's appropriate. Any questions or comments or discussion amongst the commissioners? Well, I'll lead off. Um, looking at the action items at the end of the document, I noticed that there were numbers from one to three highlighted in red that was that were added to many of those. What was the significance of those?

Okay, that's that's a great question. Within the implementation table, you've got a lot of information. Um, you have the action item, which goal within the very within the identified chapter it responds to. And then there's this sort of center section. The implementation time frame is determined by short-term, midterm, long-term or ongoing. So those are the boxes and then the numbers within those boxes identify a prioritization. That prioritization was something that we worked with staff and we worked with the advisory committee so that we could determine what what recommendations really should be advanced first. Um so those items that are number ones are the highest priorities uh that we believe the city should begin initiating as quickly as possible. Um some of them are in that first column. they're short-term items that can be accomplished within the first few years of the planning horizon. Um so we identified the timelines as um short-term basically looking at the first um see sorry 1 to 5 years. The second the midterm is 6 to 12 and then long-term actions we anticipate being initiated and taking longer than 12 years to be realized and completed. ongoing tasks or ongoing action items are things that don't really have a timeline to them. They may be a program that's initiated that would be an ongoing type of program. So that's the way that the table works. We've also identified um the action type and so that that sort of bubbled diagram that showed the various types of actions that may be regulatory or policy or um infrastructure related. Those are the types of things that you see in that column. And then the key entity and partnerships that basically assigns responsibility to some entity

that will not necessarily be the only in entity or individual who's got to um see that particular action item through to fruition, but would be the responsible party for basically owning it and helping to foster it along to the point that it can be um adopted by the city. One other thing that I'll throw into the mix. As we were talking with the advisory committee, um there are a couple of city councilors on that committee and um they saw value in having a pretty specific list of to-dos through the action table and um also ensuring that there's basically a monitoring process so that whether it is quarterly, bianually or annually there is some type of um documentation and progress report uh that can help all of the decision makers understand if something's falling behind, maybe why that is, or if something h needs to be repprioritized because of changed conditions. Um the comprehensive plan is, you know, a long-term plan. We're looking out into the future about 20 years, and we don't expect the community to stay static for 20 years. We do encourage the community to annually take a look at the comprehensive plan, make those adjustments that may be necessary because of changes that have occurred or on the horizon and um and really to align the city's strategic plan that the administration and council establish on a regular basis. Align that to the comprehensive plan so that you have the

community's vision sort of speaking up into those various directives. Um, but also once that one-year sort of housekeeping check on the comprehensive plan is done, you need to think about the next step being about 5 years out. It'll be a time to take a look at demographics, take a look at some of that baseline information to determine how the how the community is growing. Are we starting to move in a trajectory that we've started to attain some of those um anticipated new population numbers? Um over the course of this planning horizon we anticipate the community growing by about 6,200 people. And so it may not all happen at one time, but over over 20 years that's pretty reasonable. And it's a matter of like how that marches forward. That number may need to be adjusted. If you you know recruit a big employer and you need to you know accommodate that and maybe maybe other types of circumstances would change that those numbers would be adjusted. that would just, you know, call for not a full update to your plan, but maybe a refresh so that you can accommodate those changes. And then at the 15y year mark probably is when you would start looking at how much of this have we accomplished? Are we at a point where we really need some new objectives and goals to keep the community moving forward?

Well, I've got a couple more comments. Go ahead. Sorry. No, go ahead. You were talking about implementation and tracking it. I know in manufacturing we use things called Gant charts

which I thought were very useful you know to contingent on what the project timeline was. You break it down by quarter or month or week or whatever. And then you use bar progress charts to see where you were on a particular item. And I don't know what the city is going to use as far as a tool to track some of these tasks, action items, but something similar to that I think would be useful. Uh, couple other comments. I think it would be useful for the city to maybe status where uh various plans that were referenced um on page 12 where they currently stand. Uh I'm engaged in some of those and I don't know. Uh couple other small items uh referencing housing stock. The planning commission we've been dealing the past three four years maybe on short-term rentals and I would think the impact of short-term rentals upon the availability of housing stock should be highlighted as a as an issue. Uh also in terms of flood plane uh there is a dam on uh Lake Carl Blackwell that has been identified as within a certain adjective urgent

adverb sorryly uh as needing to be addressed if that ever broke and we've seen flood planes identified on land use maps that could be a major issue to say at least the other is but I was glad to see that the uh document the plan that your team put together identified several uh issues related to flood plane because I think that's a that's a concern uh something you know referencing resilience we as everyone knows some experienced uh major wildfire event back in March.

Yep. And I don't know, you know, there are procedural or process uh changes or improvements that can be made for dealing with future events which will happen at some time or another. But also, is there any consideration of land use uh modifications that could be made to address the wildland urban interface? I don't know. But I I think that's an open question that needs to be addressed. U well enough for me.

Well, thank you for that. I think that a lot of those comments are largely addressed within the city's adopted hazard mitigation plan which has recently gone through an update. Um so in in reference to that, we we didn't want to rewrite a plan that's that's fresh and that is current. Um, but we did reference that and we wanted to make sure that the city is taking into account the recommendations from that hazard mitigation plan. It does address potential hazards such as wildfires, flooding, and um, and other types of natural disasters that could impact the city. It also um I haven't read it recently, but I un I've written one I've written a couple and they do typically also address things like dams to identify those that um can benefit and and would be appropriate to utilize federal funding to uh address through improvements. So, particularly those high hazard dams that need to be um improved for safety purposes, that's something that is often housed within the hazard mitigation plan because that plan is what is activated to make the city eligible for FEMA funding that has programs that would specifically address those types of issues. Um, so to to the best of our ability, we referenced and incorporated recommendations from those adopted plans. Um, but we do want them to in large part stand on their own because they're very customized for the purpose that they were written.

I had I had just some kind of detailed questions. Um, and I think selfishly I probably focused more on the updated land use map plan for this body to really think about how we would be using this document moving forward. Um, so one of the questions I had is in looking at the color coding, there's one of the color codings is labeled employment zone and and I know we've discussed maybe kind of renaming and and looking at some of the zoning titles a little bit differently moving forward. What what exactly um is the thought behind employment zone for those areas? So just to clarify, the land use categories are not the same as the zoning.

Okay. Um so the land use categories are meant to be more generalized and then there may be a menu of zoning districts. For instance, that would fall into the medium density residential. You may have a couple of different districts. With regard to the land use category that's called employment, we typically look at that as sort of your heavy commercial um lighter industrial advanced manufacturing type uses that would generate jobs.

Okay, that that that makes sense for the most part in the areas that I was looking at. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, and then there were just like a couple of of little detailed things like some areas here and there where we did have like where we currently have some neighborhood commercial but on the land use map it's showing up as as like a residential and I'm wondering if those specific areas are things that we have under special use permits or perhaps something else. So Jake will probably want to talk some more about this because he did a lot of the land use um mapping. Couple of ways that or at least the methodology that was used for developing the future land use map um we started with existing land use. So not necessarily existing zoning but existing land use what's on the ground today. Um and understanding the distribution of those existing uses. Uh then we looked at zoning. in some cases they don't align because people haven't utilized their zoning or they're non-conforming or something to that effect. It could be just a timing thing. Um and then we talked more about how that fits into kind of the goals and policy of the land use component of the plan. Um and the feedback that we had gotten through the land use workshop and other online components or online tools. Um so those were the pieces. We also used the existing future land use map in the C3 plan just so that we were not deviating substantially unless there was a particular reason to. So you'll see a lot of uh commonality with the existing future land use map but with some adjustments to really hit on some of the goals that are housed within this plan. I don't know if you want to.

Yeah, I mean all I would probably add to that those are the the sources sorry those are the sources uh that Don mentioned that informed kind of our our baseline that we walked into that land use planning workshop with in September of last year. Uh that is what we used as the starting point before developing scenarios that were based on the input we got during that session. Uh and then we took those different four we've got four scenarios out of that basically that we presented to the advisory committee uh and let them discuss those and we reviewed them and talked about the merits and demerits of each and ultimately resolved based on kind of a a hybridization of a few of those on the final model that then to get one layer more detailed we took that model and actually looked kind of parcel by parcel at how that would apply and how that would create a complete map with you know with no gaps. So, so that's how we got here and then we've iterated a couple of times um with small changes kind of individual properties that needed to be um not reszoned but recategorized. Um so in the case of those those items you're seeing that are are standing out to you. I bet circling all the way back to what Don said, it's maybe an existing land use thing that differs from what is actually zoned there because of non-compliance or special permits or something like that.

Right. And and I and I will say on on the topic I I greatly appreciate the the added thing kind of from the the map that we have that's 20 plus years old, right, to this one is having all of the opportunity consider to consider mixed use

because I really think that um is going to allow us to to achieve a lot of these goals that have been set in this plan. So I I was really happy to see see that opportunity here as a roadmap moving forward for for this body. Yeah, we hope that we hope that becomes a gamecher like that gives more opportunities. Um, some of the careful like calibration of that will have to happen in the development of updated zoning and subdivision regulations. The city's already initiated that process. They have somebody on board who's starting to draft updated code. Um and so we want to make sure that this policy is what the it meets the expectations and the needs of the community gets adopted so that as they develop that they have sort of policy support to to move forward with things like mixeduse zoning districts.

Second the motion. [laughter] Oh Mr. Shanahan, we do have the flood plane showing on our future land use map. We do. You do. Are there are there any other that was provided to you? [laughter] Okay. Any other comments or questions? No. Okay. So, um thank you very much. Thank you.

So, at this point, we will open the public hearing and ask if there's anyone in the audience that would like to speak in favor of this item to please come forward. Seeing none, I'll ask if there's anyone in the audience who would like to speak in opposition of this item. Seeing none, we will close the public hearing and ask staff to resent to return to present our findings and alternatives. Okay. Okay. So, we didn't put a separate uh presentation together just for the findings and alternatives. The findings are complaint is great. We recommend um the alternatives I've laid out in your staff report are to accept the findings and recommend the city council adopt it to table the proposed comprehensive plan or to um find that the envisions to water 2045 comprehensive plan is not needed and do not recommend that the city council approve it. Staff recommends alternative number one, which is to accept findings and recommend that city council adopt the proposed envision so water 2045 comprehensive plan as presented.

Thank you.

Well, I just wanted to thank the uh team for a very important and useful tool that you provided to the city and the various commissions. I'll I'll echo Commissioner Shanahan's thank you. Um it's been a pleasure working with you and um everything has been very easy to follow and I think um a lot of good care has been taken and I think you listened to the city of Stillwater and its and its residents. So, thank you. Anyone entertaining a motion? I would say based on the thoroughess of the presentation, the approach and the recommendation from staff, I would accept the findings and recommend that it be uh city council adopt the proposed envision Stillwater 2020 2045 comprehensive plan.

Second. We have a motion and a second. We shall now vote. Motion passes 5-0. We'll move into the next portion of the agenda and this is miscellaneous items from staff planning commissioners or the city attorney for discussion on possible action. Believe we have a staff member who would like to give us a miscellaneous item.

Yes, good evening. David Bar with development services. I just wanted to take a moment to um to also thank uh the team that has helped us with the comp plan, but also this was mentioned um uh by the the presenters that uh that we're updating our code. And so, and if you look at that implementation schedule that's in the comp plan, um several of those items are about uh updating our code in various areas. And so I was just going to let you all know um because we approved the agreement with our planning consultant to update the code a few weeks ago and that agreement doesn't come to the planning commission. Um but we had a kickoff meeting today with them. Um we're hoping to have a new code um adopted um about a year from now and um we're very excited about that process. Um so we're already getting started on what uh what this comp plan is is is you know kind of leading us to do. Um, and you know, hopefully it's going to be a streamlined uh code for um for developers, for staff, um, for planning commissioners, for all all that are involved. And so anyway, I just wanted to give you all an update on that since um you maybe don't uh you know, aren't aware and and but yet that'll be that'll be coming to you all um next year and and and you know, there'll be a very transparent um process for sharing that with the public um and getting their input. So anyway, just thought I would share that.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Any other miscellaneous items? Just the next meeting. Okay. All right. The next regular meeting is December 2nd and the last item on the agenda is adjournment. Do I hear a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. We shall now vote. Motion passes 5-0. We now stand adjourned.