Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

conference will now be recorded at six o'clock. Okay. All right. We'll call this meeting to order. It's January 6, 2026. Um so today, our chairman, Dusty McCracken, is unable to attend this meeting. So in accordance with our bylaws, the vice chair fulfills the duties of the chairman in his absence. Thus, I will facilitate the meeting. I'll be as unbiased and uh be mediator as possible. So, we're going to have an invocation and a pledge of allegiance and that will be led by Mary Ellen. So, please stand and

Father, please give us grace and wisdom as we strive to do our best for this beautiful town that you've allowed us to live in. Amen. [clears throat]

I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all have a motion to approve the agenda. to approve the agenda. Have a motion to approve. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Second. Uh any discussion on the agenda today? Okay. All in favor of approving the agenda say I.

I. I. All opposed. Okay. Um, next up is uh the minutes approved for December 2nd, 2025. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes from December 2nd, 2025? To approve the minute on that date. Thank you, Caroline. Do you have a second? Second. Um, any discussion on that means approval? All right. All in favor say I.

I. Opposed. Eyes again are unanimous. Okay. Now, um we [clears throat] move on to public comments on agenda items. Do we have any public comments on our agenda items for today? Going once and twice. So, okay. Um so, next we will have our uh director's report. our uh planning zone director Mark Groer. Are you well said? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Be glad to um this report uh provides you with a a detailed account of key activities that the department has taken undertaken since the last time we met. Um, the department is making changes, as you all know, to the tree preservation ordinance and has scheduled a planning commission special workshop to be held on Wednesday, January 28th at 5:00 pm in the civic center here. If you haven't seen it, we did a cool poster that we're going to be posting around and putting in different places so that we get some uh activity. Um, we also uh provided now on that poster hyperlink that members of the community can go to on our website and actually read uh the newly revised uh ordinance. I was looking at it today and uh just for your information um the ordinance when printed out currently is 35 pages long. The revised one is 17 pages long and I wish it could be shorter. Uh but we have made substantial progress on simplifying and reducing the amount of redundancy in the ordinance. Um, but we're hoping that we

get a good turnout um on Wednesday the 28th. Uh, and the reason is is I reviewed all of the council ordinance actions over the last 10 years. Sherry provided that to me and this is the third swipe we've had of this ordinance in the last 10 years. And I'm hoping that we I never think that we get it 100% perfect. It's just just the way ordinances are. They're just it's like making sausage. You never get it like perfect. Um but I will tell you that I think with your help uh and with the help of the storm water committee uh we have now an ordinance that is easy to understand, easy to interpret, and most importantly easy to enforce. Um and that is going to be the subject of the workshop on the 28th and hopefully we get a lot of participation from our from our residents. Uh one of the uh as we remember the last time we met we went over some of the key issues. Um I've taken all of your comments from that meeting and have modified the ordinance to meet with all of your suggested modifications to the ordinance. So I think it's a better document now. And once we hold that special meeting, um, I will be bringing the revised ordinance back to you based on comments that we received at that public workshop for our first what I'll call official public meeting um, on the adoption and and approval uh, seeking your recommendation to take it to the next step which is then to take it to town council. Town council will hold two hearings on it. A first reading and a second reading. one of those two readings. I think in this town, I believe you usually hold the public hearing on the first reading. I believe that's the way you do it here. Uh some cities do it differently. They put it on the second one. I I don't

understand that at all, but I think you do the first reading on public hearing on first reading. Uh this evening, um one of the things that I've been working on in the last month was and it's on your on your agenda this evening is another modification being made to the zoning code. uh that would create a specific off- streetet parking requirement for self-s storage units. We had an applicant uh come to us probably about three and a half, four weeks ago, right after we met at the planning commission last time, uh who was interested in doing a self- storage project. Uh the zoning worked and when we got down to the brass tax, we started looking at the parking requirement for self storage and oh my god um you want to talk about an overparked parking regulation. I mean the the number of parking spaces required for the self storage was way out way out of line. Um, so what we did as a staff is we pulled all of the zoning ordinances from all of the surrounding communities and ultimately you'll see tonight we've actually suggested one of those. We actually just copied somebody because it sounded in line. It sounded sort of in the middle of the breadth of range of parking requirements that we got from the rest of the communities that we pulled. and uh we've got that um on tap for you this evening as a suggestion to modify the zoning ordinance and with your recommendation we'll be taking that to the council um not at their next meeting but probably in their February meeting. I don't know if you received did was there a copy of the poster in the uh in the packet that you received? I thought I was going to thought I wanted to put that. Well, if if if it's not there, um please go online, go to our front page, scroll to the bottom of the front page, and you can see the poster for the uh

the workshop. Now, I'm not going to take any credit for the artwork on that.

And the reason is I did it entirely through AI. And what I did is I spent about 25 minutes describing to AI what I wanted the poster to look like. Well, the poster is amazing. It's got trees in it. It's got the pier in it. It's got everything in it. And um I rema remain because I'm a geyser just amazed at the amount of work is that is saved by using AI. If I had sat down and handdrawn that poster, it would have probably taken me three days to get it. But it's really it's really quite attractive and and like I said, I take no credit for that. Now, can you take co- royalties from the making of that artwork? [laughter]

I don't think I would be allowed to do that. Um, all of the artwork and that's what's nice about AI is all the artwork is, you know, like when you go online and you want to use an image sometime and it says stock image and you have to pay for it or you have to provide in your document where you got that. Well, that's the beauty of AI is that none of the work they none of the imagery that they use is stock imagery, which is basically all royalty-free. So, it's a pretty cool uh I hope you get to look at it. It's pretty cool poster. And like I said, uh just you know, when it came up, you know, it takes like 10 minutes for it to go through its little roll and when it finally came up, I just shook my head up. I can't believe just made any progress yet on retaining a company uh to establish an online permit portal. The department is waiting for a quote from Civic Plus, who is our current online portal purveyor basically. And once we get that, I think we're going to be able to move forward. But I'm I'm going to suggest to you that by the first quarter this year, we will have an online portal for zoning permits, enforcement, uh building permits, uh and building uh building uh building inspections. Uh so that will be done probably hopefully, fingers crossed, by March. Um, and I don't have this on the written part of the director's report, but I wanted to share with you something that happened today. We had a an individual uh come to us today with a request uh to put uh an addition uh a covered patio on one of the restaurants in our entertainment district.

And the building it came to the building department for came with the building first and building told him that the 10 there was a 10-ft setback and that he was encroaching into the setback and he'd have to get a variance and wanted to know from me what I thought the chances are getting a variance for that. I said, "Well, there's really no hardship here. Can they prove a hardship?" The applicant got it got like no I can't really prove a hardship. Long story short is I looked at the address again and I said that doesn't sound like the right zoning district to me. Zoning map that the building department was using was the map that is on our website and online and shown as our official zoning map. that map is at least seven years old. They didn't even have the entertainment district on their map. So, I looked at our current map and if any of you ever wanted wonder where the official map is, it sits in my office on the wall and I found out that that particular restaurant was in a zone that has no rear setback requirement. So, I was the you always like making these calls when you're the zoning administrator. you call somebody and say, "Hey, remember we told you you weren't gonna be able to put that 10 feet on the back of your patio? Got some good news. You're in a district that now permits that." So, I spent about Well, I spent the better part of this afternoon trying to find who had our most recent zoning map. Map was adopted in June of 2022. The firm that has the map told us that they would help us update that map because we've had about four zone four or five zone changes since that map was published and approved by town council. Um, but every once in a while you you

you come across stuff like this as a as a director and you just kind of just kind of rub your head and just go, how does this happen? You know, how does how do we go seven years with an online map that is completely out of date and So, you know, those are the kind of things that, you know, that happen on an occasional basis that um, like I said, just make me kind of crazy [laughter] when I find stuff like that. Um, and that completes my my director's report. I'd be glad to answer any questions that you have about the report. Thank you.

In reference to other things that he's referring to. You know, he's going and we'll be discussing the storage warehouse several. That's okay. Um I just wanted to say that I did see the the um brochure the poster. Thank you. And um when I first saw it, I thought this is not something that the town usually puts out. This looks really I mean not that we don't put out good stuff, but it looked very different from what we usually put out. And I said this really good creative. So, good job. They are, like I said, good job. I mean, um, it was nice looking. You know, most most people use Czech GBT, right? A lot of people use Chat GP,

but I use Chat GPT plus and I pay $20 a month for it. Tower pays $20 a month. And I cannot tell you how much more horsepower Chat GPT plus has versus Chat GPT. It can create images. It can create flowcharts. you can you tell it what you want it to do and magically it appears on your screen and I just like you know being the being the old guy that I am remembering I used to have to do things with letter set pens and and actually handlet you know things like that and now we're doing it in the matter of minutes and it's just uh

I did see it I agree it was it was great because just it was nice it was friendly looking it was you know I thought it was it was very good yeah hopefully any other comments or questions, Mr. Chairman? Yes. Uh I I echo what Melody said, Mark. It I think the the poster is uh a good poster, but it's a very good idea. I think we need to use something akin to that to drive people to our meetings on a more regular basis.

Um because we do discuss important things that when I chat with people in the community, they're interested in, but do they come to the meetings to express their um opinions on X, Y, and Z? No. Um, and we just need to get uh people here. Yeah. Uh, and uh, uh, so I'm kudos. It's, uh, it's a, it's a really good start to hopefully something that I think we need to change in this town.

Alex, comment on the maps. I'm glad you're updating them. And I think there were two subsequent predecessors sitting in your seat. We've had that request out there at least commented that uh it needed updating. But along those lines related to maps, trying to find it now that somewhere in our website at one point recently, we had uh a flood plane map which was also outdated. Yeah. That looks that our current zoning map which is out of date has at least one flood plane listed or at least the line in there which is also changed such so it's not just updating

exactly each zone but it's also updating

the flood zone lines the A1s the A13s and all those yeah that those are all reflected on that giant map in my office and my thought was certainly somebody has taken this map off of my wall and run it through a scanner and created an electronic file. Nope. Nope. How can we as a department depend on people coming to us with zoning applications that are filled out properly when in fact they don't know exactly what zone they're in. So the other and I I don't need to take up a lot more time, but the other thing I'm working on is something that I've had in the last two jurisdictions that I worked on work in and that is an applicant goes onto our website, they put in their address and the computer tells them what zoning district they're in right now. And it's kind of hilarious, folks. If you've ever been in my office, you know the map is on one wall, but my wall, my desk takes up half of that wall. Sometimes I'm literally standing up with a magnifying glass, holding the magnifying glass up to the map and going, "Yeah, that looks like 2178, you know, and it's it's nuts." Yeah. I mean, when I just created a poster for a map in five minutes, and here I am old schooling it with a map on the wall with a magnifying glass, I'm thinking, "Yeah, there's got to be a better way to do this." And a better way to do that is uh a company that worked for those two previous jurisdictions that I've contacted and I want to get a quote from them to tell me not only what the zoning is. I want the TMS number to come up automatically and I want the flood plane district to come up automatically. That way our applicants, our residents are armed exa with exact information that they need because I

can't tell you how many zoning applications we receive over the counter that people just simply allow us to fill in the information because they don't know it. Excellent. Just one more thing on that note. Um, and and yes, Alex, I'm so glad that you're working on that because there are and you know, we have people that come into town, they look on they look at our site,

they and they're and they're trying to buy a house here and they think, "Oh, I can do this and I can do this." And then this is this is where my house is. This is what flood plane it's in. This and they're buying a home based on incorrect information. say they aren't buying and I'm in because the realy the realy people in town use that map that we have online to identify what zoning is and I shudder to think how many how many titles have been written with incorrect information we got to correct that right it's being corrected tomorrow for sign yeah there's going to be a new mage

Larry I just have a quick comment I haven't seen the poster. I'm anxious to see it. Uh hopefully it'll draw people in. Uh when I was on the commission years ago, we used to have some monster crowds. I mean, they would fill this room. So, uh if the word gets out Oh, that's beautiful. [laughter] If the word gets out and it's on a subject that people are very interested in, [clears throat] I'm just hoping we see this workshop get a big turnout.

Yeah, I think people are are passionate about trees here. I would think we get a we won't get a a monster turn, but we'll get a turnout because people are interested in trees, I believe. Um turn All we can do is like you said, maybe maybe what we do is just start creating posters for like let's say we have an item on the agenda that we know tonight no one showed up for this parking regulation change on on uh self storage, right? Well, we could put a poster up that basically says, "Hey, come talk to us about, you know, we're going to have discussion this evening about the parking regulations for self storage because right now parking regulations that we have, nobody in their right mind with the self storage would ever come to town with that park." And maybe that's what we want, but but it's way out of whack. So when we reviewed eight communities around us and we were at the north pole of the the condition versus the south pole, uh yeah, it was it was pretty evident that we need to change.

I I think one thing we can do is include these in the mayor's weekly um we could story, whatever it is, because I read those every week. I'm sure a lot of people I think a lot of people. And uh if that's in there part of it, I think that'll okay hit more uh that more residents uh with the information. How long I'm almost embarrassed to ask. How does he do one? One a month once a month. One a week. A week. Weekly report. Okay, Mr. Chair. Also quarterly there is a town newsletter. Okay. And that's where we used to put out information about new regulations. That hasn't happened in a long time. Okay.

Thank you very I saw something coming across my desk the other day where I was asked to review it and comment on it. So make sure we get get it in there if we can get it too. Thanks. Good advice comments or questions. Okay, let's move on. Um next is business items. Um we have election of officers and uh before we can have really any discussion we have to have a motion to uh conduct the election of officers. So do we have a motion to have the election of officers?

I move to conduct the election of officers for planning commission that is on the agenda for tonight. Do we have a second? I'll second that.

Okay. All right. And right now there's discussion and you can humor me for a second. Um, anybody else can discuss, you know, after this bit, um, I would ask the commission to consider postponing the election of officers until next commission meeting in February. Now, our bylaws require annual elections at the first meeting of the year. And Dusty sent out an email just today saying that we cannot deviate or suspend these rules, which is true. However, I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, uh, the commission may postpone the election by motion and votes until the following.

I would I would add one thing to that. Can you take the motion? It has to be to a specific date. You have to say we are postponing this until February. You all probably know the date of the next meeting to the February 7th planning commission meeting. At that time, you have to you can't just leave it. You just can't leave it empty where we can postpone it forever. You have to bring it back to your next bring it back to your next uh shooting.

Now, the the the reason I'm bringing this up is uh our chairman, Destiny McGra, I think he's been I think we all agree he's unbelievably hard worker. He's been u really aggressive in the work that he's done. um is every uh you know I do and T cross. Um now his uh commission technically is up this month and Alex your commission is up the on the 11th correct and you have put your resignation in correct I haven't reapplied you haven't reapplied but effectively resigned to

right right okay so um uh you know whether you rec recuse yourself or not from the election uh I think that's a question of whether it's legal or ethical or the outcome you're you're not going to serve on a commission. But um because of that and we will have one and if there's anyone else who is considering um resigning uh we have I believe three and I had to you know go to the town staff and ask I believe there are three uh possible nominees for the positions on the commission and possibly another one if I you know that speculative. Uh we just had a conversation earlier today. Um but those appointees if they were to join our commission um and we had the election in February, they would be [clears throat] able to um be part of the election participate.

They could participate. They could also possibly be um one of the officers. Now, you know, I don't know if it's privy information or not to share, but one of the applicants is a former commissioner. Um, and then they they were part of the council and they put their name in to be part of our team again, which and I have great respect for this person. Uh, the other person I'm not familiar with. Um, but I I believe my personal opinion would be that it would be a disservice to have our uh elections today and not have the opportunity for um these you know other potential commissioners. Um now uh uh let me continue here. So next month we'll have a full commission including Dustin um and uh you know there are some complexities too also and we've had discussion about the secretary um in the past the town clerk was our secretary and you know she has her plate pretty full and she's asked in the past to uh not participate in that and thank thankfully Angie has stepped up to the plate Now, ideally, I had a conversation with Angie and um if there was someone else who could take on that secretary position, would you be okay with that or would you prefer to stay? I

either way. Okay. Either way. So, um you know, Mr. director. I don't know if you uh in your previous history, does the secretary typically in your in your knowledge um do they come from town clerk or are they typically on the commission? Um how does that work? My experience, it's about 5050.

Um and how it would work, there's two ways it can work. Uh well, I'll tell you one of the ways that I haven't seen it work where someone on the commission is named secretary, but that secretary isn't burdened with taking notes, taking motions, and doing that sort of stuff. We all, all the places I've worked, we always have a staff person from the planning department staff who prepares the minutes for and prepares those for your approval. Now, if there is a member of the planning commission who is the secretary of the planning commission, the staff person takes those minutes and takes them directly to the secretary. The secretary then goes through and makes her his or her edits to that and then brings it forward for your group approval. um it's just a a preuncterary step that you take uh where you actually have somebody on the commission who's assigned the secretary position. But state law is really clear that there's no right way or wrong way to do it. You can do it either way. Um, the only thing I would suggest or recommend to you is that if you do elect a planning commission or secretary that you don't burden that person with taking of the minutes and doing what I would call sort of what is now the staff function. Uh but it's in my opinion it's it's in it's inappropriate to have a staff person as a secretary which is a basically a position on the on the commission. So you know six half dozen one or the other. I really don't have a strong opinion either way. It's just that I've seen it both happen both ways.

Yeah. Much of this is new information for me and I, you know, I saw that we had an election where there was a secretary and who I don't even know if anybody on this commission is interested in being secretary. Um, you know, there's a lot of, you know, I always look at an equation and there's variables. A plus B equals 11. So, I know 11, but I don't know what A and B are. So, how can I make a decision on A if I don't fill in one of the other variables on B? And one of the variables here is, you know, you know, who's going to be secretary. Also, there's some confusion, and I apologize for belaboring this, but I don't know if, you know, I've been vice chair. Um, and the role of the vice chair, and I have a description [clears throat] of what the vice chair does. Um, it's basically step in with the chair when he's not available and it's usually in a meeting like this. He conducts the meeting. It doesn't go much beyond that. I think there was some confusion of uh my interest in continuing as vice chair if Dusty McCracken was still our chair. Um, if he is, you know, I enjoy doing this every so often being chairman. I'm not sure if people getting into the election.

We are. That's what we're discussing. We're discussing the postponement of actually there. There's not a motion on the Somebody has to make a motion. It's sounding like a campaign.

Okay. Sorry, I'm not campaigning. I just want because there was some confusion. There's some confusion about Secretary as well. So, um, under Robert's rules and our bylaws, postponement is permitted by a vote of the body and commissions. So, just, you know, to put it on the table and we can vote on it. I move to postpone the election until our February meeting. Um, and I would encourage that we entertain this at least so that we can have some discussion. So, do I have a second? I second. Um, specifically for February 3rd. I thought we needed a concrete update. Have to specific date.

Maybe I should restate my motion then. Okay. I make a motion to postpone the election um of our officers until February 3rd, 2026. Second.

Okay. Um discussion, Mr. Chair, just like a couple of points of clarification. No particular order. Our bylaws state that a member that the director or a member of the town administration is the secretary. So we vote on which of those people. It's not one of us. Uh the second part your comment out of legal or ethical for me to vote or recuse myself actually per Robert's rules which you've been voting. Yes.

I can't recuse myself. I have to vote. There's no part of what my future looks like that has to do with today's vote. I can't. So that's that's literally in Robert's rules. So it's not a legal or ethical question. It's I'm here today. There's a vote today. You can vote. No, I can't. Or that's it. This is not Congress. Our Robert's rules of order. Okay.

You can look it up. Uh the other item are bylaws can't be postponed. They can't be votes can be postponed on other matters, but if the bylaw say state something, you have to follow it. You can't just say, "I'm not going to listen to the bylaws today." If our bylaw says the first meeting of the year, then we have to vote the first meeting of the year. We have bars. That's that's what the words your opinions, your feelings, your desires, mine too, have nothing to do with that. It's not postponing date specific. This is not us voting yes or no on an item outside of the bylaws. This is a bylaw item that we have to follow. We want to change the bylaws. We have to do that, but we don't have time to because that wrote a required action in advance of this meeting. So, we're

Sure. I'll just respond to that since Yeah. A motion to postpone an agenda item is not the same as suspending the rules of procedure or amending the bylaws. Okay. Unless there's language somewhere in the bylaws that says the election date is absolutely mandatory. Postponement motion is normally there is language that says what is the language ordinance

chairman. with section two of our bylaws that specifically states the officers of the commission shall be a chair uh chairman uh or chair and vice chairman elected for oneyear terms at the first meeting of the commission in each calendar year. He uses the word shall. So I think it's mandatory.

Mr. Chair, yes. I'd just like to to comment on your point that with new members won't have an opportunity to vote. I think all of us would agree that service on the planning commission has an extremely long learning curve.

True. and why it would be wise to not have the experience of someone like Alex with four years of sitting here. His wisdom as opposed to having the votes of two people who's first reading it is just makes no sense to me. If you have our our bylaws in front of you, is there anything that says we cannot postpone the election uh for particular meeting? Does it say we cannot postpone the election? That's not how laws are written. Doesn't say you're allowed to blink three times a minute, right? Like no. you know,

that says what we must do. Doesn't list the universe of possibility, right? You're asking.

We're we're we're not changing our bylaws. We need 7 days uh advanced notice to change our bylaws. What we're doing is we're postponing an election until a more appropriate time so that dusty is available, the new commissioner that will be in your place is available. And so that it's clear I think in this discussion um you know who we what is appropriate for secretary and you know is it part-time clerk you know if it's not you know who should it be and I know that we have trans transition where you were part-time secretary is that correct

that was only because we had zero staff support at that time it was it was that or nobody right so I mean this is why we're having this discussion Mr. Chair, you're asking us to not follow the bylaw. No, no, I'm asking you to follow the bylaw. But okay, then we vote to bylaw says shall which means many

and that's fine. But that's I mean my my understanding, my research um and the reason I'm bringing this up is that I think it's appropriate to allow whoever else is coming onto this commission to decide who will be chairman, vice chairman, and secretary for the rest of the year while they're on while they're on this commission. You happen not. We've disagreed in the past. You you you came to this meeting. You said you weren't going to come. you decided to come so that you can be part of this vote, which is fine. Orders, if you're gonna put words in my mouth, make them accurate. I said, I don't know if there will be a next meeting before my term is up, knowing the meeting dates change. Okay?

So, in case there isn't a meeting before the 11th, I wanted to share that I'll not be here at the So, I didn't say I'm not coming. I think between you sharing the refusal, the secretary, ignoring the bylaws, I think you're I think you're on the line.

I'm not ignoring. This is a discussion. Um, and you know, I I I have no mind in the matter. I I just want to do what's right for this town and what's right for our commission. And what we can do within our commission is make sure that we're doing what we agree upon. And if we as a commission, and you know in my research, if we as as a commission decide to have a vote to postpone our election until the said date, my understanding, and I I've looked at several sources, is that we can do just that. What are those sources? What other sources in my research?

What What other sources? Uh Robert's rules for Robert's rules does not say that. I know it fairly well. Are we going to look through Robert's rules? I'm challenging the validity of your state. So, let's say we don't have an answer here. We do have an answer. We have bylaws that we spent the better part of seven months reviewing to say here we need bylaws to follow. Absolutely. And now you're saying ignore the bylaws. I put words in my You're saying postpone the vote, which is counter to other bylaws. Uh, so you're not listening to it. It's not counter. It's It's not changing the period. It's not We got to separate.

Okay. So, you your opinion, we have your opinion. Any other any other comments

before we uh take a vote on this and you know, no, no matter what happens, it's fine. I mean, we we'll work through it as a commission. I um my last opinion and and if anybody else has a a comment before we we take our vote that is fine. Um you know we we want to try to do the right thing. We want to do the fair thing. We want to have uh Dusty have an opportunity. We we want to have whoever is coming on the commission have the opportunity. We want to make it clear which we have on what how we want to figure out the secretary situation. um and you know who who we you know we'll if if we decide to have our um election today will go through the proper procedure. Um, I I just think as a fair person, I think it would be not a bad idea to postpone until next meeting. And in my research, and you can research it on your own after this meeting, and uh I wish somebody could come up and comment if they had, you know, they were a lawyer or something. Um, is that we aren't changing our bylaws. We're postponing an election to a set date, you know, following this meeting. Um, any other comments,

Mr. Chairman? I guess

two points. Um, number one is I think that the bylaws are a higher point of order than Robert's rules because we have adopted them as our operating procedures on top of Robert's rules of order. So, um, I do think we are obliged to follow that. Um with the second point is with regard to the secretary position we have already decided the secretary position there isn't an election per se

uh with regard to um the secretary um uh position uh [clears throat] uh we have said that the secretary is to be the director of the um uh planning, building and zoning uh uh department um or a design. And so I think that issue is resolved. I think it would be up to Mark to appoint a designate uh in his place unless he wants to be the uh person running those things. Um and so the only election is for the uh chair and vice chair. Um according to section two,

um I'll just briefly say I'm not going to vote to break our uh it's just not my nature. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Any other comments? Would you restate the motion?

Uh, sure. Um, motion is to postpone the election of our officers until February 3rd, 2026. That's the motion and was seconded. And um, so that's the motion. U, but before we vote, Mr. director, do you have any comments on everything that I don't want to put you in the hot seat and and really this is just from I'm a middle child. I'm trying to be fair as possible and to do the right thing and uh you know and we're all this is our this is our decision. We can make a decision to vote or not. Um enough said.

I think you need to follow the bylaws. However, however, there's a workaround here and you're not seeing it. The workaround is that you take a vote to open up the election and nobody makes a recommendation or a what what's it called when you oh a nomination somebody doesn't let's say you say nominees for chairman and you all sit there sitting on your hands and don't say a word nominees for vice chairman or you can actually name those and you when it comes time for you to vote you can say I abstain Hey, you have the right to abstain from any vote moving forward regarded. I mean, the chair the bylaws are clear. You're supposed to elect the chairman on the first one. But as independent members of the planning commission, you also have the right to say yay, nay, or abstain.

That's not true. Yeah, you do. No, you don't. Yeah, you do. you. Every commissioner on this has a a right to Yay. Nay, you're abstain. Where's our lawyer? I know, [laughter] right? I think I'm right, but I could be wrong. Yeah, I've done this before. Melody, Mr. Ch. Yes,

I know that the folks in the audience see me well. I know that you do, but it is really inappropriate for you to be talking out. So, just be careful, okay? I don't want have any problems with anything. So, I know all the intent is very good and things can be frustrating and it's hard not to, but just be careful.

Mr. Mr. Chairman, I guess I wonder what would happen, and I'm asking this of Alex because Alex seems to be more in tune with our bylaws than than even I am. What would happen this evening is if we didn't have a quorum and we couldn't take a vote on any of those. What What happens then? What happens then, Alex? Then we didn't have a meeting. Our first meeting will be the next meeting. Sorry, Mr. Chair. No, thanks, Alex. I just I Yeah, you all have been at this a lot longer than I have with your bots than than I have. Yeah, I don't study your bots.

So, um so saying all that, we're trying to fill in the variables and you know is it it is complex and I understand that there's different opinions on every side. Um and you know, it's challenging, but I thought I'd bring it up. We had a we had a second and we'll have a vote and I'll I'll restate the motion and um you know if uh you we just continue to meet. Um so the the motion on the table is to postpone uh the election of officers until February 3rd, 2026. Um so all in favor say I. We might want to roll call this.

Okay. Yeah, that call. Um, do you have a roll call? Do I do that or does Angie do that? Angie, could you do a roll call for this? Miss Carolyn? No. Mr. Larry? No. Mr. Scott? The information I have at this point, I'm still a Yes. Miss Melody. No. Miss Mary Allen. No. And Mr. Alex, no.

Okay. So, the motion has uh failed um to table the election of officers. So, that means that we will we will continue with our election of officers. Um now, here we go. Alex, if you could be ready to um fact check me. Um before we conduct our election, here's the responsibilities of the officers according to our commission's bylaws and standard practices. Um they state the following. Chairman is to set the agenda and provide notices along with the town staff will now this is truncated will call and preside over all meetings and public hearings while maintaining the quorum and order. Thank you Melody for helping along with that. That person that chairman will sign all documents historically and he he historically is a neutral facilitator uh officially represents the planning commission. The vice chair exercises the duties of chairman while the chair is absent, disabled or disqualified. If both are absent, the commissioners will then elect an acting chair. Um so even though our bylaws say um the commissions will elect an act acting chair if neither are available. The secretary takes minutes from all meetings hearings and maintains records responsible for notices. It's usually the town clerk. Commissioners may serve as secretary. Historically Surfside designated town clerk as the official secretary. The staff carries much of the recordkeeping and illustrated support that might otherwise fall to officers roles in smaller jurisdictions. Duties like notices, agenda preparation and file maintenance fall mostly to staff,

planning director or exit the not the secretary. Um so those are the roles for the offices. Now [snorts] um we'll we'll go through the nomination and you know if if procedurally I need to be corrected please do so. Um okay so this is a nomination for election of chairman vice chairman and the question is whether it's the secretary or not or or not. Okay so at this point I will now open up the nomination of chairman. Would anyone like to make a nomination for chairman? Chair? Yes.

I nominate Justin McCracken for another year's children. I'll second that. Uh there's no secondation. That's okay. Um uh are there any other nominations for chairman? Okay. So at this point since there are no further nominations, Dustin McCracken is elected by acclamation um uh we will Okay. So I will now open up the nomination for vice chair. Are there um anyone anyone want to nominate the vice chair? Mr. Chair. Yes.

I'd like to nominate Carolyn. Okay. Do we have another any other nominations for vice chair?

Since there are no nominations for vice chairman. Yes. Can I decline the nomination? I don't feel like I've had enough experience on this body to serve in that building. My understanding is that um my understanding is yes, but uh Director Ber, do you happen to know if somebody's nominated if they can decline? I believe they can. And I say I believe I can. I don't know for sure. So

you can't make somebody take a take a position without Well, seeing pleading requests coming this way uh to do you all think I have enough experience? Absolutely, Mr. Chair.

Yes. I I do feel that that Carolyn has the skills and uh has demonstrated this year with an incredible amount of work that she has put into you know the dirty work of of helping to get our ordinances off and running especially during the period when we when we had no staff. I feel that she would be a strong vice chair if such were needed. What? Oh, excuse me. His is background. Go back a year ago. There are a few of us who in case that Caroline is new, she wouldn't notice. Some of us don't want it, right? [laughter] Those of us more experienced have either been there, done that, or have some other reason not to.

I will accept a nomination

as a point of comfort. Um, it's, you know, I'll go back. It's a very short description. Uh the vice chairman exercises the duties of the chairman when the chair is absent, disabled or disqualified. And often I mean I I've been the vice chairman for the last year and I I took his place uh facilitating the meeting I think twice. So um you know I I agree that you are well qualified and I think you make a great vice chair. Um, so let's um [clears throat] at this point, are there any other nominations for vice chair? Okay. Well, um, Carolyn, how do you pronounce your last name?

Prain Praik is elected by acclamation. And now we move it on to secretary. Um, so there was discussion about that. I'm not even sure exactly what we need to do at this point because and and I'll I'm going to because I know Alex has it up in front of him. What are the bylaws say? The house say it's an appointment. It's an appointment to the town clerk, correct?

Mr. chairman. I can read it if we can throw it up there. If you have read it, please. Um well, it describes the um duties of the uh secretary, but the it then goes on to say the secretary shall be the planning, building, and zoning director or an employee designate appointed by the town minister administration. Mr. Yes, in that case, I don't think we have any action to take, right?

Okay. It it was on our agenda. Um, and I was confused myself in advance and there was a lot to prepare for. So, um, we'll move on. Congratulations, Dusty again. Congratulations, Carolyn. Um, so I think it's so um, let's move on to our, uh, discussion items. Uh now we have uh discussion items A, B, and C. And the first item is um what our director has referred to earlier. It's a review ordinance language 17-420. This has nothing to do with what we were dealing with the with the Bates ordinance. Okay, just to be clear.

Yeah. So uh 17-420 space required for certain uses review of certain sections of chapter 17 zoning 17-420 regarding parking requirements for self storage warehouse and other establishments. So this is open for discussion um um respectfully I'm usually the staff report and then we open it for discussion. Is that appropriate?

The the item before you this evening, Mr. chairman and members of the commission is a parking requirement for many warehouses or self- storage units as they're sometimes called as set forth in table 17-420 of our zoning code. A proposed use such as a warehouse or similar has an R designation code in that table. The current parking requirement under our designation in that table is one space for each employee plus one space for each 250 square ft of floor space. If you all know the size of these mini storage spaces, it doesn't take long to figure out that a mini storage project of a 100 project would probably require 100 parking spaces. We all know that that's way well, it's just wrong. I'm just going to say that. It's just wrong. In my professional opinion, the parking metrics is egregious and out of line with the typical parking requirements for a mini storage or self storage warehouse. Now, I didn't come to that statement lightly. I wanted to research everybody else's and see what they were doing. So, I have printed for you here recommendations from three or four different um jurisdictions. Everything from uh again using AI that they answered these questions perfectly for me. Middletown, Rhode Island was one space per 100 storage units. Walter Burough, South Carolina, one space per 4,000 square feet of gross floor area. Berkeley County, South Carolina. One space per 300 square feet of office area. Minimum aisle widths of 24 feet must be maintained between buildings. No parking requirement for the spaces. It's just for the office. James Island, South Carolina. One space for 25 storage units plus spaces for any outdoor vehicle storage. My recommendation to you is to be consistent with Ory County's parking regulation. Ory County requires one

space per 50 storage cubicles and four spaces for the manager's office space. My recommendation is to amend table 141 17420 to include a new letter recommendation specifically for self storage which would look like the letter U. And under the letter U in the table it would say one space for 50 storage units and four spaces for the manager's office. That concludes my staff report.

Thank you. Any comments? Couple questions. Very few places left in Surfside Beach where storage unit go. So I think I know when that hunch is right. You probably do. Then it's commercial 17 which doesn't allow storage unit. So maybe something. Okay. It may be a different one. Yeah. Okay. Or or they're going to come to us with that recommendation and we're going to look at the zoning code because that Yeah. We were talking about parking spaces when they came in.

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Take a look at that. Oh, my two cents on the matter that really doesn't hold a lot of weight right now is storage units are anyone be hardressed to come by and present me a case where a storage unit did anything for a town's aesthetics revenue and property value etc etc. They are a medium initial investment absentee owner low ongoing yet recurring revenue business. It's a great great business model. Excellent.

Very appropriate for Ory County, the greater Ory County where there's vast plots of land and the like. And in Surfside, very few places. We have two storage units in town. Now, I also be interested to see if anybody thought that they were an excellent thing for our town. No offense to storage units, but you know, to me, my own humble opinion is that the two that we have don't look great. So, even a brand new one, after the pink fades, the shrubs die, and the mulch washes them away, we're back to what we already have here. So I believe somewhere in time someone was very smart putting that egregious number there as an artful way of saying we don't want storage units.

So despite what other towns which are bigger than two square miles which might have a lot of open space where the storage unit tax revenue makes more sense than raw land tax revenue. I don't know looking at those towns to mirror square footage per parking space makes sense. Additionally, the proposal coming from staff was 50 units per parking space. Park say the average storage units 10 by 10. I know they're a lot smaller and they go a lot bigger. It's 100 foot 50 5,000 square foot. We're requiring virtually no parking

for the storage facility. Um, so I again we're not voting here today, but I'm just the other side of the coin away from an egregious number is maybe it was intentional and for very good reason by someone who was a steward of the town not wanting a 35 ft tall 200,000 square foot metal building facing anybody or doesn't do anything for tourism. That's for sure. I share I share I share your opinion because when I saw it I thought certainly nobody in their right mind was placing that knowing what storage units typically parked at my hunch on the location.

I thought this is a very there is a this is a very low-key way of basically saying we don't want to self storage unit it in that location. Yeah. If if uh yes and even if one lot is not technically facing 17 I think the greater partial collection of lots of res so C17 I don't know the exact veracular that would chop that out I believe from the get

thank you Alex I do have a question Um, how will this apply to the existing uh storage unit business? It makes it it makes no impact on existing.

I mean, we can control whether or not we have we want or do not want more storage. But I can tell you uh I was a customer of the big storage unit thing here for the first seven or eight years I lived here. It's great. They don't need any parking unless you're storing a vehicle there because you're that entryway. You're you're there to unload and load. There's no parking there. You just park by the door, load up, and you're out of there. Uh the only parking I ever used was I signed up for a spot at the parking at the office.

So, at the office spot. So, you know, what you're proposing is fine by me. uh we can deal with whether we want storage units and I think we have in the past and turned them down. Uh we can do that in a in a different matter. I think you want to solve this this particular problem and I like what you've put forward. I would um query the rest of the commission on that very issue and the very issue in my opinion is maybe this isn't a parking regulation modification we want to make maybe what we want to do so we want to go in we want to tighten up zoning but to make sure that we're not allowing I mean if it's the general feeling of the commission okay I'm just now I'm painting with a broad brush here if the commission is desirous of not having any self storage I 17. The appropriate way to do it was not by creating an egregious sparking approach is to basically state what we want and that is to prohibit any further storage units along Highway 17 or any of the side streets in the C1 district. That's the appropriate way if we want to modify those and I think that's I think that's the appropriate way to proceed. Um and again this is before you this evening only as a discussion item. So, I will take whatever direction I get from the commission. But if the direction from the commission is, thank you for providing this to us, Mr. Mr. Director, but we'd like you to come back with a modification to the land use table, which makes sure that we prohibit storage units from Highway 17 in the future.

That would be that's I think we already did that. [laughter] Okay. Um, Angie, can I beg beg your indulgence here? Can you bring up the land use chart um for permitted uses a district because I'm Alex I'm thinking it's not the parcel that you and I are thinking about and when the individual came to us we really I believe the district was the C1 district that they were placing themselves in the C1 is all highway 17. So I just need to find out if in fact this is a dead or moved point to start with. Right. Nice.

Oh, but it's not going to be as efficient. It's not going to show, right? Oh, it is. I'm never sure that the use table I'm looking at is the current one because it doesn't have a lot of the things that we have dealt with just in my short 10 years. Oh, really? So, okay. it. Uh uh I I I I've testified before town council that I think we need to fix this problem um for the town's sake, the the business's sakes, your sake. Yeah. And so I'm dealing with the right

I can't ever know that I'm looking at the right uh things. And uh um so anyway um I don't know [laughter] um says it's a conditional use uh in Seawark. Okay. Conditional use. The conditions are placed on the project by the director. That's how conditional uses are handled in this town. They're handled differently in other places. Does the conditional use refer to the designer? That may be the condition that I would place on it that it would be consistent with the

Yeah, I think that's what that's uh it doesn't specifically mention the overlay, but it says use specific conditions and all other applicable regulations of this code. Yeah. So it necessarily bring the well it doesn't take off the overlays. Yeah. So that's one of them and I would probably come up with like five or six others that I can think of on storage that but the reader of this doesn't necessarily know that that incorporates the overlay. I I mean it's just a

an issue I have with your indulgence. Maybe we just table this item. Okay. table this item not move forward with the parking regulation because I don't believe and Kelly correct me if I'm wrong I don't think there there's a P self storage units or warehouse units anywhere else in the town I correct anywhere else in the town yeah like any other zoning district [clears throat] oh I thought it was an R for permitted for permitted scanning through. I don't Yeah, takes a lot. It's a big table.

It's a big table. There's 137 different uses on that table. jumps out. Okay. Okay. But like I said, I don't I don't have confidence that I'm looking at the uh table. Yeah, I know. Um, that's a uh that's a

actually it's a it's a parking code of R in the table I'm looking at. Yeah, it's parking of our correct uh and that regulation is crazy high. There are other Rs. Uh seems uh taxi service and truck or bus terminal. You're looking at the parking regulation table. No, no, I'm looking at the use table. Okay. And I'm looking at the the parking code column.

Okay. Don't look at that. Look at the look at C1 district. Run your run your cursor down to C1 district and scroll down and see if you come up. It'll probably down the bottom probably called a warehouse unit or mini storage or it'll call self storage on the list of permitted uses. Yeah, I was at um mini mini storage or something. I'm sorry. This is so hard to use. [laughter] Mr. Chairman, yes. May I make a I'm just going to make a recommendation to the commission. Let's bring this back.

Okay. Um, I'll fully I'll fully bake it. U making sure that and and I think one of the things that I'd like to get at least a head nod from all of you on is heading the down a p a path that I'm suggesting that uh has that has been suggested and that is if it's the community's desire not to have self storage on Highway 17. And I can tell you that as sort of the master of the corridor, I would tell you that from a big picture planning perspective, you don't want self storage on Highway 17. If they can hide it in the back someplace on a C1 district that doesn't face the thing and it's in the back, yeah, great. Go for it. Um, but uh they would still have to meet the requirements of the overlay district, which for self storage, very difficult. However, if it's the desire of this commission to make sure that we remove the cup, conditional use permit from that use in the C1 district to a an X or basically that they just leave the box empty, meaning it's not permitted. I'd like to to know if that's more of the desire of the planning commission at this point rather than messing around with a parking regulation that looks like it was placed there as a way to discourage self storage.

I'll open it up to any questions or comments about that idea. Yes. Appending further research. We're not real clear on where this will be allowed anyway. Apparently, uh I would not be in favor of any action that encourages more self storage. Sure. The way I understand it, ladies and gentlemen, is that

self storage is permitted in the C1 district. C1 district makes up all of the parcels all of the parcels on Highway 17 and many of the parcels off of Highway 17 going back through our town limits. The parcel that in question is is a parcel that is not directly on Highway 17. I believe it's not. uh if if memory serves. Um however, if it's the desire of the commission, the council, and the community not to have any more self storage uh in the Seawore district, then let's make that let's make let's make that our chart [snorts] rather than messing around with parking. Any other comments before we move on? So I think consensus we had an application for stock storage and it failed and I think that was the main reason is that we just as a town two square miles we want our corridor 17 to be as you know aesthetically

a lively commercial business that's what we want

even even though one of these new buildings would be attractive potentially but it's still a storage unit. So, um you know, anything new is sometimes nice, but we prefer. So, shall we continue on? Any other comments? Okay, we'll move on to the second discussion item, capital investment program. Now, Alex, you headed this up way back. Um it's uh discussion on creation of capital investment program to recommend to town council. Um, we've been through some of this discussion and we've done through some things, but we'll continue to discuss it. Do you want to uh make a comment on on this particular item?

I'd be happy to, Mr. Chair. Uh I might be missing a few data points here, but it was state statute has some vernacular in it that said in addition [clears throat] to the comprehensive plan on an annual basis at town council's discretion shall provide a capital improvement plan uh to be reviewed [clears throat] and something to that effect. Um, we did a little bit of work on it. It's probably 50/50 with towns that actually do it. Those that do it, actually, there's some very nice capital investment plan. So, capital investment plan doesn't mean we have the money to do all these things. There's a little bit of a priority ranking, some estimates of pricing, and you a planning commission saying, "Hey, you know, in addition to your while you're working on the budget, let's keep these items in mind. And some of them are naturally going to occur, you know, street paving. Other ones, unless there's some intent behind it, may never get looked at and they'll perpetually live on a 10-year plan, never be accomplished. So, it it is more meant to be a guide and aid for town council to consider, you know, do we add three staff here or do we spend that money here and alignment with the 10-year plan or do a little both, right? It's just without that document tool that operating in a vacuum of just current department head needs today and over the next 12 months. So we presented that concept I think you touched on as a matter of fact to town council and if I think this the summary of the outcome of that was well just give us a a list of some of the priorities that you think are important and I don't know if that occurred or not. Uh that's that's what I've got. So I I didn't see that council asked for something that they could have asked for

which was create a capital investment program delivered to us, you know, in conjunction with budget and that that's their discretion whether or not they want that. So I didn't see that. So I don't know what if any next steps exist. Okay. Um Marilyn, would you go to say something? Well, what yeah, Alex's comment about he didn't know if that occurred. My impression, and I can't back this up, is that the general idea was council was saying it's it's too late for this year, but for next year, I could do it this way. That's what I recall.

I didn't remember. Excuse me. I don't remember exactly either, but I do think that And I agree with Alex that they weren't really saying yes, please do it. They were, you know, it's like, okay, if you do it, you but do you have it now? If you're going to do it, you got to have it for the budget time and if you're going to do it that, but not will you do it. Not not we want you to do it. Did you want to [clears throat] say something, Caroline? I do.

I see the look. I got the look.

Um, so, um, I, uh, reviewed the, um, uh, the document that was attached to our agenda that, um, I guess Mark prepared. And I had lots of questions about um what the the process is. I I understand uh the notion of a capital uh improvement plan or a capital improvement program. It's supposed to be a five-year look forward and plan for um your investments uh going going forward. But what's not clear to me is the the process [laughter] and what a plan looks like. So, I went and looked at some plans and I looked at Mount Pleasant's plan and I found it to be the most um informative of how to go about this process and uh they describe uh how they do it uh in uh in their document. They currently have a capital improvement plan for fiscal years 2026 through 2030, which is the whole idea of being this look forward in time and plan for uh what you're going to do. And um so just to give you a sort of a a synopsis of what they uh do is that they start in the fall with um their staff uh coming up with uh the different

improvements that they would like and they were not necessarily uh brand new things. They might be to refurbish something to, you know, like we did the um Floral Lake uh improvement kind of thing. So, it it's it's not necessarily, like I said, um uh building a new council chamber or whatever. It's it could be lots of different projects, but they describe them as being capital projects that uh have a value of $25,000 or more. So that they're very clear. They're not talking about hiring this individual or doing um um I don't know, having a fireworks show or doing whatever. It is specific things that at least my interpretation that in the the tax world would be treated as a capital uh cost and uh so they go through the process they then have a ranking system that they go through and they rank not the same kind of ranking system that we used in um I don't know summer or fall with um using the uh comprehensive plan. They they have assigned numbers and they have specific things they're looking at as to how uh necessary a thing is in terms of the um operation advancement etc of their um community. And so they go through and they assign um numbers from 0 to one. And then they add those up.

And uh the items with the highest values are the things that are deemed to be um of uh high priority and that they so they they create a uh system of prioritizing the different things. Uh one example is they have a fire station that is uh pretty old 50 50 plus years old and so it was given a very high priority as to its need for renovation, refurbishing etc. And uh so then what's not clear to me is how that document then gets passed along through a body like this. Um and then to town council. Um uh it would take more explan exploration than I had time for. Um, but there must be a full process that they use because they go through and they uh actually assign numbers, not something that this body would do, but actual numbers that the um uh various departments come up with and then they say, "Okay, we're going to slot this amount of money for fiscal year 26 and then We are going to base our budgeting on fiscal year 26. The other years are wishful thinking. But that's where, you know, when we come back around to fiscal year 27, this is where we're going to

start and look at, okay, did we do all the things we slated for 26? And if not, why not? And uh if it's still a need, we move it on to the um the budgeting process for um 27. So it it's it's marching you through time to get to the end of your five-year period and then the end of your um comp plan period. Um so I thought it seemed like a pretty good process. As far as I know, we don't have anything like that going on in town. I know that there are budgeting requests and what have you. And I suppose the first question is should we have a process like that uh to um uh make things um work better to um uh abide by this whole idea of coming up with uh a capital improvement plan and I don't know they keep changing the name I guess anyone that was confusing to me.

Yeah. Um but uh uh from uh looking at Mount Pleasant, I also looked at um Ory County, but theirs was backwards in time. Um at least the one that immediately came up to me. So um uh but similar kinds of things where they they're working this into their budgeting process. Uh and um like I said, I'm unclear without uh uh further research or outreach to these folks how the planning commission folks in these areas get worked into the uh the process. Um but anyway, I offer I offer that. I think it makes sense unless you just say, "Okay, we're not going to do any of this." And I think it's a mistake not to do it. I think I think we need to do some of it. whether or not we need to have this lovely glossy document like Mount Pleasant, which obviously has more money than than we have. Um, but it seems to me that their process probably didn't involve that much more than um, you know, investment. Uh certainly creation of the the plan uh involved u some money but the process didn't seem to be that um uh ownorous or involved from a financial uh standpoint and I'll quit there.

Mr. Chair, thank you Carol. Um, yes, Ariel.

What I like about this process that Carolyn just described in Mount Pleasant is that it it provides for some continuity over the years. Now, I will remind any of you who were there about two years ago, we had a kickoff meeting for our comprehensive plan. Council was there. We were there. Business people were there. Department heads were there. The number one concern at that kickoff meeting was that this town struggles with continuity and and that plan certainly has some year-to-year continuity in it. And I think anything we can do to help our town with that, it's a good idea. Any other comments, Larry? Mhm.

Um I I'll just make one quick comment. Um uh I worked with Alex a little bit. He kind of uh refreshed me on or updated me on what his idea was. I added a few ideas for context, presented it to council, and their response was a little bit surprising at first because I think they thought that we just wanted to take over their purse strings. You know, they control their purse purse strings. You know, they were kind of hesitant and hopefully I reassured them that that's not what the point of this was. I mean, we're basically I mean, as a planning commission, our our role is to present things and make recommendations to the council. We don't make we we we can't we don't control anything. You know, we make a presentation and they can take it or they can leave it. Um, and hopefully after that meeting, they more were more clear on that. Um and then they said basically in my understanding and we can watch you know video of that. Um said kind of work on it, decide what you want to do and then you know come back to us with and I think great research Carolyn on um you know what Mount Pleasant did um you know we I I always believe why reinvent something if there's a template let's let's go with that. So um uh that's a and you know capital investment program you know CIP uh you know there's different terminologies for it. So, um I think unless there's any other comments, we'll move on um from here.

Mr. Chel,

um I do have one comment. I think was some miscommunication perhaps with council about it and I don't think that it was well received. Um, I do think as a planning commission, what what better thing can we do than help to plan the future of the town and and let the council the council has the big picture. They get to decide what what happens and what doesn't happen. But I'm not sure that we could spend our time doing anything much better than maybe cleaning up the ordinances and [laughter] and some of that. But I I agree with if we can find a process that works. I think that when you know we we had a list of items and we all rated them one to 30, however many there were and it was just kind of from that it was just kind of taken and somehow council got that and it was like these are your priorities like wait a minute we didn't even really discuss these things after we rated them. We didn't rate them as a commission collectively. We did that individually. We didn't even come back and look at the numbers together and talk about it. It just kind of got to them. So, I think we got off. If we're going to do it, I would like for us to, like Caroline said, have a process, have a clear process, have a clear objective for what we're trying to accomplish. We can't accomplish anything if there's some not something that that we can measure to say we've done it. So, um I I'm I think that we should entertain it unless council says, "No, we don't. That's not what we want from you." I do think in in the past we've had past planning commissions have perhaps had different

relationships with council than the one that we've had. I would like to think that we can improve that and that we can work hand in hand and with council and making our town the best it can be. I think we can do that. I think we've got a good council and certainly I think we've got a good commission. So, I mean, I don't think it's something we should just say no to unless Do you have thoughts about it, please? I do and and I have mixed feelings. Okay. I've done this before. Okay.

And here's how we do. I find out what the annual budget is for the capital for capital improvements and that includes a tax funds, general fund, and all those. So, we we need to find out what that number is. Surprisingly, I asked for the capital improvement program from our finance department. It doesn't exist. There's no such thing right now as a capital improvement program. But they they want the finance department wants to have capital. Here's how we did it. We held a workshop, planning commission workshop, planning commission, we listed all of we took, we literally cut out pieces of paper, colored paper, and then we listed all the you talked about the projects. We listed all the projects and what we did then is we said, here's the total number of dollars that we can spend in a year on the capital improvement program. All of these projects are three times the amount that we have. So, we're going to have to pick and choose which ones we want to go in the GO column and which which ones go in the next GO column. The continuity that you're talking about is the comprehensive plan. So, the projects that we're going to select for inclusion have to come out of the comprehensive plan. So, if the comprehensive plan says, and I I know it doesn't say, build a second pier, that would be one of the top priority items that we would probably put in there and try to figure out how to budget for probably a five-year budgeting, but that's how we would do it. We would go through the comprehensive plan, and there's supposed to be a priority investment section of your comprehensive plan. I think there is. We would go through that and I would identify the projects for you. come back list like let's say 18 pieces of paper on the wallet up there and next to them I would guesstimate as your staff person what the thousand what the amount is over $25,000 because that's that's the base floor that we're going to start with. We're not going to talk about $800 items,000 items. And besides capital improvements, folks, is things you can

put your hand on. It's not staff time. It's not but it's not staff resources. What can I put my hand on? fire trucks, police cars, trails, new paving, a swimming pool, new tennis courts, a new baseball field. Those are capital improvements. Those have to be identified in the comprehensive plan if we want our council to be consistent with the with the comprehensive plan. And I think we all agree that's the continuity, right? Because council people aren't always on the council. So the continu it's hard to maintain continuity when you have election cycles, but the comp plan is what we always come back to. That's the primary source of development of the priority investment program. So I would put those on the wall. I would tell you what the total dollar amount is and you would all decide which ones move from the column over to year one. Which ones would then take and put them in year two. And we would actually do it for about a five typically a fiveyear horizon because after five years you're just guessing. You're just guessing what things are going to cost. So you generally do it for five years. And my suggestion always to planning commission is you don't want to run your numbers of your projects up to the total amount of the capital budget that you have. You go for about like 75%. You've got to leave things in there for I call it unexpected projects that the council or the community feels we need. Let's say for instance the uh one of the baseball fields got flooded and just killed all the grass or something something we're not planning on you know something we got to have an emergency side plan and you all go through those and then what we do is we simply come back to the council with year 2027 these are the five projects we think should be done year 2028 these are the five projects and then they can then play sort of I call it roulette with

those and and move those items back and forth maintaining like say 70 to 75% of the total funds they have available to uh to manipulate up front. It's it's an ardu it's arduous and I'm going to tell you I wish I had like three staff people that I could do it for you at the next meeting but it's not an easy process. Mount Pleasant has like 18 staff planners. Okay, you've got one and doing what I'm just described. I had a staff of five people do what I'm talking about. So, it's something we can do. It's not on I'll tell you right now, be honest. It's not high on my priority list right now. My priority list is getting our zoning code shaped up. I mean, we you know, we've got zoning maps on our website that are, you know, out of date. I mean, there's just a lot of housekeeping that needs to be done before we start fresh and new on a a path of creating a a priority. I call it a priority investment program. It's a priority investment for for council to consider. So, when council gets it, they know the council knows that we have selected projects that are consistent with the comprehensive plan. Why is it important for us to do this? I'm going to tell you an exact example of why it's important for us to do this. Councilman A gets elected in let's say 2027 and he has been thinking that he wants to create a worldass pickle ball um facility in town. It's not in the comprehensive plan anywhere. Not there. So that should die on arrival because it's not consistent with the comprehensive plan. But that's why I always tell you, leave a little money in there extra in case somebody comes along with a really cool idea that we can all my eye on. And all we have to do then is

we simply, and I don't think you I don't think communities here do a lot of this. You simply amend the comprehensive plan. You open up the comprehensive plan and you say, "We're going to we're going to modify the priority investment program to build a worldclass pickle ball facility in town and then you can move forward." But it doesn't allow what I would call these sort of pro, you know, pet projects that somebody on council or two people on council might say, "Let's fail the second period. You know, the first one seems to be doing really well. Let's fill the second." It has to be in the comprehensive plan. And if it's not, we have to amend the comprehensive plan to say so. So the comprehensive plan is a checks and balances for you and for council so that we have that 10-year continuity in our planning program. Mr.

Yes. It's occurring to me that that's the the same principle as the ordinances. We have the rules. We're going to do something different. The first thing we do is change the rules. that applies to ordinances and it applies to to the the comp plan and the and the investment plan. We're going to change something, we do it formally. We do it forally. Yeah. Yeah. You can't just go off on some tangent.

Thank you, Marie. Um, so to the to the continuity point and I I agree. I do think we've got so many things. We've been we've had been through so many directors, so many town administrators, we changed councils. There really there has not been and and I think everybody's trying. I don't think it's, you know, everybody's trying, but there's not a lot of continuity. you know, it's however many years ago they did, you know, 14th Avenue South was made the prototype in town for, you know, putting the power lines underground and the new street lighting and and I think a lot of times when we get new council people, they don't they're not even aware of that,

you know, and that's just one thing. And there's so many things that just kind of get pushed by the wayside. Not not that we're not still putting power lines underground. we are, but there are just so many thought processes and things that happen that get pushed by the wayside because other things that come up that are important or we change people and they do have other priorities. So, I think that I I understand that we need to move forward with cleaning house a little bit and I think that's vital and and certainly crucially important. But I would like to see us have a plan like this on the horizon because I think that we can work with council and be a a support role to council. We're not we don't need to be council. We just we can be a support role to councils. I I mean I've been going to council meetings for over 20 years and it used to be that council said gosh we've got this going on we don't really have time to deal with this let's send this to the planning commission and ask them to do some work on it and you know we don't hear too much of that now just because we change people nobody knows how things were done or what is good and what's not true. So a long way of just saying I understand we need to work on some things and I thankfully let a map straight out

but right but I mean some of it's not simple some of it you know some of it is no and like I said you know that's why I said I have mixed emotions on this whole thing. Sure. Because I see so much that needs to be done what like tomorrow and that just that's just on my plate right now and to say hey Mark you know what we'd like to have a priority priority investments in March and I would look at you and I'd go

I can try but it's going to be a failed effort. I really, if we're going to do this, I really want to do it right. And I really want to talk to all the I want to talk to all of the directors and tell ask them what their projects are, what's in the comprehensive plan that supports their projects, all those sorts of things. So, when I bring that list of 18 projects and I list them up there, you have a pretty good idea that staff supports it, the comp plan supports it, and generally I believe because the comp plan was approved by council that the council approves it. But it's a it's a big it's a task. It really is. Mr. Chair, can I say one more question?

So I believe that I understand that we are supposed to at least review the comp plan every five years, right? Sure. So, so you know, maybe that is an objective for around that time. Maybe we give you a little time to get some things in order and God willing, you'll still be here.

Still be here. Yeah. and um um you know maybe we could you know put that on on the track for that time frame. What we can do is we can we can include it on on agendas where we do like a a step a mini step or a half step so that we start to build momentum toward this ultimate workshop where we decide what goes in what year and where the capital money is going in those years because u I'll be the first to tell you that I don't understand the you know there's general plan there's a tax there's tourism there's a lot going on here in terms of like where the money's coming from and where the money's going. I'll be the first to tell you that I don't understand it yet. I'm too new here to understand, but there's you all know what I'm talking about, right?

So, yeah, we have to think about, you know, like what are we going to do investment for tourism? What are we going to do investment for police and fire? How are we going to keep those facilities up to speed? How are we going to manage the turnover of fire trucks? Have you have you seen what a fire truck cost these days? I mean, we're lucky to buy a secondhand one for $120,000. I mean, they're just like astronomically expensive. So, I mean, you know, that could be one year right there. I mean, that could literally just take the budget for a year. So, let's um I'll bring this back. I'll bring it back in bits and pieces. And maybe what I do in the first couple of times is I just start to educate you beyond what we're talking about tonight about I could go through the comp plan very easily and just pick out for you all the projects that I see listed in the comp plan and just let you all look at that list and say we didn't know those were in there. You know, because you know who studies the comp plan? I don't. I mean it's it's my Bible. It's my it's my blueprint. Uh, but you know, I don't refer to the comp plan every day. I mean, tell you where I'm referring to. It's a zoning code every day. That's where I'm really spending my time.

Mr. I just say one more thing on the subject of continuity and that is that like Melody, I've been watching this whole thing for over 20 years. We had a lot of processes. They got lost. that got lost mostly due to turnover or whether it was staff or council or committees. Some quit, some required. There wasn't any overlap. There were a few cages cases of scorched earth by the departing staff. Oh yeah. And uh some of the stuff that you're having to invent. We're inventing it for about third or fourth time and it's just another piece of continuity. I guess we're getting too far away from the investment plan.

Yeah. Just the example of the tree tree ordinance being done three times in 10 years. That's unheard of. That's just unheard of. It's like you get tree plant tree ordinance in place and you stick to it because when you change it, the person that you just told last week that he couldn't take two pine trees down, suddenly the ordinance comes back and he finds out that guess what? You keep those two pine trees. That is not a good look for a community, let me tell you. So, we've gota Yeah. You've got to make these things right the first time. Like you said, get it right and stick with it. Yeah, stick with it. You all said, I think so. I can tell this. Yes, Carol, please.

Um, so first off, um, I did go to the town council meeting where this whole issue was addressed. And my takeaway was that the town council did want something from us. uh not necessarily, you know, uh the ranking kind of thing that we just did um o over the summer, but mo more along the lines of a capital improvement plan. So, I think we don't have to ask them whether they want it. It's it's something they do want. Um I like the idea of the post method. Um uh I think that uh is a um uh probably an easier method than the Mount Pleasant method uh in terms of our uh uh folks and the and process. I would hope that we might be able to do that come the fall so that we hit the

the next cycle the next um budget cycle. Uh, and maybe we're not doing it to the fullest uh that you might otherwise do if you didn't have all these other things on your plate, but if we could just do it at least in part,

that would be uh great. In the meantime, there is a budget process uh uh that's going to go forward for 2026. Um, and I would recommend that we make our uh capital improvement plan recommendation to the town being one that is pretty simple. Um, I think our simplest thing is uh all over the comp plan is everybody wanting sidewalks. And so we we recommend that the town uh budget for some, you know, so many linear feet or what whatever the measurement is uh for um uh for the um uh for the next budget cycle. Maybe we make a recommendation about where those linear feet are. I I don't know whether that's really in our baywick, but um that we make at least that recommendation to town council because I think there's always probably enough um money uh if we chose to do it to put sidewalks in.

Not quickly. the add a little bit of levity levity. I think we've concluded that we're adding three programs. Capital investment program, capital improvement program, and a priority investment program. Right. Right. And you said you're going to have we're going to have it all set by next. Sure. That's great. Yeah.

Okay. Let's move on. Discussion item uh number C. No, it's note numbered. planning commission drafting workflow and staff coordination procedure. Uh it's we're we want to have a discussion regarding the planning commission's procedures, the workload and communications outside public meetings. And I had asked Dusty added this to our agenda and I think it was I don't know if Caroline asked to have it put on our discussion on anyway this this stems back from we had a conversation there um you know we're trying to be as efficient as possible as commission and um making decisions and discussions during our meetings. We can have meetings for five hours. I mean we can keep going and going and going. Um and so there there was some discussion on okay why don't a couple of commissioners get together and and kind of work work some things together and I think I believe me uh may have mentioned said you know we are a commission and we should be working together on these things. Um, so on the one hand, we want to be efficient. We want to do some behind the-scenes work, but we also want to make sure that um we have decor, we we're conducting things in a quorum before the public and everything is, you know, for everybody to see. So I think that was some of the background. So from there, uh, and Carolyn, I don't know if you're privy or interested in, uh, talking about this or starting the conversation.

I I certainly can start the conversation. Um, uh, after our last meeting, there was, um, some informal, uh, chitchat, not with a quorum. um about what we could do to facilitate uh some of our uh process. And shortly there, we didn't have a good resolution or whatever. And shortly thereafter, we had the town training um uh situation with um I can't remember where that is from. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh and uh so there was a lot of discussion towards the end of that uh meeting about how we could uh communicate in uh non meeting uh situations and not violate our um uh obligations under FOYA and Robert's rules etc. And so the takeaway that I had from that is that um Mark could send out an email to the full planning commission uh let's say about treats

and I could uh uh respond to Mark about his uh tree document and I could suggest edits, raise questions, what have you. And the uh uh conclusion at that uh training meeting was that when I responded to Mark, my response could go to the full planning commission. But none of you all can respond in that. You can just use what I have said as um hopefully thoughtprovoking or what have you and then be able to submit your own thoughts to Mark um without it creating any um violation of these requirements. And that means that we are getting the benefits um for our own um thinking processes outside of the meetings of what other people have to say. Um so um uh to use an example from tonight um if Mark uh put out the parking business and Alex thought there's a good reason we have this or we we we had other reasons for going down this road and you know hey we really don't want to have these uh storage units on 17 whatever he could respond responded back to Mark with that and

then that gives all of us uh that information and maybe causes us to be thinking more about those things. We could have looked at the use tables and things like that in our off time and then when we uh came to this meeting maybe we have a more um thorough discussion of where we go with that. So my takeaway is that it is just in the email traffic to Mark that we can do a reply all send what we are saying to Mark to the entire group.

Mr. Chair, can I can I ask a question? So you're saying I'm sorry. So you're saying that you could you in your email you would you send it individually to Mark and then then send it to us? You would send it and copy all of us. Yes. And then if someone wants to somebody else wants to say something they send it to they can't send it in the same email. They could send it to Mark separately. Okay. And it could also copy everybody or not. It could be copied to everybody. Okay. But not not reply all just send another email.

We're not we're not uh communicating or debating the issue back and forth. All we are doing is providing thoughts um one person's thoughts. And uh I was kind of surprised we could do this. And um but we were told that this was acceptable. I hope they were right. I I'm surprised as well, but I I mean I I um NA's advisory. Yeah, sure.

I'm sorry, Director Bro. Every town of Attorney that I've ever worked with has told me this. you send out an ordinance for comments from your planning commission. At the bottom of that email, you put in bold letters, do not reply all. And I think that's a an overcautious approach. It's overcautious. I think what you're talking about is technically legal, but town attorneys that I've worked with tend to push the pendulum over here and like keep me out of court,

right? And the reason and the reason is obvious right it's it's I mean different states it's called the sunshine law meaning that whenever we conduct business light shines on that project for everybody to see when I send something out and ask for your comments and you give me comments that is first of all number one it's very helpful very helpful to do that and it and it really helps me fashion the agenda of what we're going to have on the agenda ultimately, right? I'm I I fall into that school of overcautiousness. I I do. It's just the way I I think that so many I just think about things that can go wrong. What could what could possibly go wrong with what we're talking about here? Well, believe me, plenty can go wrong. So, I've always and you will continue to get from me text text on ordinance changes that says, "Please do not reply all. Please reply directly to me." I have the option at that point if I want to. I can reach back out to that person and say, "Could you clarify this or clarify that?" That's okay. But I wouldn't do it to everybody. and say, "Hey, look, uh, Caroline's got an idea that we need to park 15 more parking spaces in front of these things." And what do you all think about that? That is a there's a word for it that it's it's a for lack of better, it's a it's an illegal meeting. It's a illegal meeting type. So, I will tend to air on the side of of caution unless you all just disagree. Uh, but, you know, as your staff person, you know, I've been in I've been in court. I've had like, you know, I've had court cases come up against things that have happened in the department, things about density and interpretations and all sorts of things. I don't like going there. I just don't

like being there. Um, so I tend to take this overly cautious city council, city attorney opinion is put at the bottom of your thing, do not reply all, reply only directly to me singularly. So, um, that's that's my ask. However, if you've if you're confident that you can do that, please don't do it. Don't tell me you're doing it. Don't just don't tell me you're doing it. I mean, just don't you in it.

Yeah. Don't Yeah. Don't include me in the in the conversation because uh my understanding is that it's it's supposed to be one-on-one from all of you. I think you know where I thought you were all going with this conversation. I'm just going to spit it out is that sometimes when you get a difficult thing like a tree ordinance, it's not illegal for us to have a subcommittee of the planning commission work on it and work on it like hard for like three weeks and come back to the commission with something cooked. Ready? Right. As long as there isn't a quorum of the planning commission working on so we can have subcommittee. So I would I would suggest you that a better route I believe is is a subcommittee meeting. We publish it goes on the website. Subcommittee meeting of the planning commission is meeting on trees tomorrow. It's an open meeting. If you want to come and participate, God bless you. You know, that kind of so that might be a better way to better way to fair some of this out. I don't know.

Okay. Can I say something? Um, that's what my understanding was. And I'm you you said something completely different than what I had interpreted. I thought we were discussing these subcommittees that we kind of created ourselves to do some of the work and then we bring it upon our you know the rest of us. But um I think both conversations are valid. Well I I I was uh sorry Mr. Chairman.

Go ahead. I was interpreting this as applying to because Dusty was at the training uh session too that this was what he was talking about. I thought we had previously talked about the idea of subcommittees and shut that idea down. Uh

uh so um uh I didn't I didn't view this as as suggesting that I thought it was a a follow on to that uh training session. I agree. I was surprised that uh I'm that we were told that this would be uh acceptable. Um, I I didn't probe all the [laughter] legal what have you. Um, uh, I I don't know. Um, maybe we should uh uh ask uh uh Jared um what his thoughts are. Uh, I wonder if there is a uh attorney general um opinion on this stuff. I mean, that's where I would go first.

That's where I'm going to get your answer. Uh but uh um I'm not for all your people, [laughter]

Mr. Chair. So, I would say that whatever we do, I I I've said it before and I will say it again. I do believe that our strength as a commission is in our diversity and our differing opinions and our, you know, Alex says something and that reminds me of something that that happened before or Carolyn says something and that reminds Mary Ellen of, oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but this happened before or or we could do it this way. I think the collective is where our strength is. I I think that it's all well and good and I'm sure it's beneficial to Mark for him to send an email and for us to respond individually to him. It helps him, doesn't do anything for the rest of us. So, I I just think that we need to find a something that works. I'm glad that we're having some discussion about it because I think we need to find something that is legal and right and okay and and that is efficient and helpful to all of us and not just conversation with you. I don't know what everybody else thinks about this, but I would have no problem with multiple mini workshops. I'm not saying even staff would have to be present, but all of us in the in the town hall conference room to work on something. There's room in there for for the public, you know. I mean, when we look at what comes here, we're not going to have any huge crowds, but sit down in the same room and call it a workshop and put it on the

put it on the website. And it doesn't necessarily need to require a lot of staff time. We could just sit with our pads and pencils and hash it out. And that would not require scheduling time with this room and all that either. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, um talking about two different things. One is sunshine laws and having, you know, being open to the public and the other is kind of having subcommittees. I remember that conversation and I was a proponent at the time and I think I still am of having a subcommittee to do some of the leg work so that these meetings aren't as long and um you know I know homework takes a lot of time and many of us have priorities outside of this commission. I also in in reference to the sunshine laws and the response I think it is a little bit of gray area in my research because I remember going back and I understand it's in my opinion it's way better to be on the safe side than to uh you know do wrong thing and they get sued. So um you know respond I think we'll we'll have to I think figure it out from here. Um but I think we had uh good discussions. I unless there's no other comments on that. Um let's let's move on with our agenda here. Um we get to the point of uh I know there was some murdering during our earlier discussion and uh you know I like to just be open and I'm a people person. I like to share my thoughts and so anything I say I you know I'm kind of easygoing. So, if somebody has a comment about anything on our agenda or anything that we discussed or anything that they have questions about, um, please come forward and and let's have a conversation [clears throat] and state your name and your address and um Oh. Uh, mic works.

Hello. Hi, my name is John Hy. I live at 515 uh Lake Shore Drive in town. I am also on the town councils and I have been appointed your leazison and I didn't have any say in being chosen but I want to sincerely tell you that had I been given an option this was the committee I wanted to be on because I felt I would learn more about how to help the town develop the future than any other committee I could have been on. So I'm happy to be here. I'd also like to say or or apologize for being disruptive during the meeting and thank you for having the courage to put me in my place. Um, a few things I'd like to say is, um, I support the the town comprehensive plan strongly because it came from the wishes of citizens and my whole goal with being on town council is to see that citizens have a very strong voice in how their town is run. Um, also, uh, regarding the, um, capital improvement program, I'm very much in favor of one. I want it to match the, um, comprehensive plan, but, I also want it to be amendable because I'd like to see things like a basketball court for the kids or at least a half court. And when it comes to sidewalks, I know we hear a lot of talk about that. There's lots of pros and cons. um the town you might find might be a little bit evenly divided on the issue, but I [snorts] think everyone would probably support sidewalks that are connected together um with the ones that already exist so that we have a walking path through town that anyone could get on and return to the same spot. So, I think that would be something I would

very much support. Um, another thing just so you're kind of funny you guys are talking about what we call serial meetings today, but I did some research this morning on that and I did send a request to Jerry Vincent about, you know, are we taking into account what could happen if someone the court decides we're doing serial meetings to get around u the foyer and I have real concerns about that and some of the research I did I won't go into it but it's was from a lot of other states that have found such serial meetings don't comply with FOYA we're a little weaker here in South Carolina but uh that doesn't mean we want to be the test case so enough said on that I like the idea of the set committees I think that's better out but anyway um I'm glad to be here and glad to introduce uce myself to you and to meet you and say hi to the ones I know and hello to the ones I know. Thank you.

Thanks, Jim. Thank you, Jim. [clears throat] Anyone else comments? No, I'm sorry. Step up to the mic and it's me. I don't know. Okay. So, I guess um if there's no more public comments, we will go to commission comments. I'm sorry. Just want to wish you all well with your endeavors this year on the the commission. John, Mr. Hyde, Councilman Hyatt, sorry. Uh congratulations on your

John. Congratulations to your side. That's an amazing group. Lot of different opinions, a lot of smart people. It'll keep you on your toes. Another great cure for insomnia. So, thank you. Thank you, Alex. Um, Mary Ellen, all I really have is one last plea to Alex to reconsider. [laughter] We're going to miss you really badly.

Sure. So, I'll ditto. Alex, please stay. We are going to miss you very much. You've done you've been such a benefit to this group and we will be sorely missed. Um, and welcome, Don. We're thankful to have you. And I appreciate that you didn't feel like I was really calling y'all out. I didn't mean it just I was trying to soft pedal it, but I thought I've seen us I've seen us get in trouble that way before. So, I just wanted to let you know stop stop. It's not a good thing. So, hopefully you didn't take that offensively. I would appreciate that. And I'm sorry there was one person that left and I hope she didn't either. Um, and just a a um little side note about sidewalks. Everybody said, "Yeah, sidewalks. Sidewalks. I want sidewalks, too." But I will tell you that one of the things that we found is everybody wants sidewalks as long as they're across the street in their neighbor's yard. So that is always, you know, that's always one of the things that comes up is so what do we do now? So just throwing that out there. But Scott, thank you for your service as vice chair for the last however many months. And um I know that you've done it at times when you've been overwhelmed with other things going on in your life. So we just really appreciate your dedication and effort and

I wasn't going to say anything except sidewalks. [clears throat] Um, my one comment about sidewalks, I you can have them or not. Uh, we have a lot of ditches. It's going to be hard to build a sidewalk over a ditch in town unless you fill that in and, uh, put pipe underneath, which would make the town look even better. That's one of my big interests on where we might spend money at some time is uh, let's [clears throat] get rid of the ditches in town. Uh, plus I grow a lot of uh mosquitoes. Um, so other than that, I don't really have anything to add. Thank you.

Thank you, Larry.

Um, a thank you, a big thank you to Alex again for uh your service and uh a thank you to Scott. Um, your sheets are going to be hard to fill. I hope I'm up to the task. Uh John, welcome to our commission. Uh I hope you'll enjoy the uh the work as much as uh I have. And uh on sidewalks, I know I'm a big [laughter] proponent of sidewalks and I understand there are uh negatives there. Um my my main deal doesn't have to do with anybody's yard. It has to do with uh safety. uh on cedar uh around the lakes as I just I walk in that area um and I so often see accidents that are just on the verge of happening and I would just feel awful if we had an accident and we could have done something to put that pedestrian over here so that the car didn't have to move into the oncoming traffic to avoid the pedestrian. Um anyway, enough enough said. Um uh good evening everybody.

Okay. Um I guess I'll I'll make a comment. Uh first of all, we want to welcome John Hayatt as our new liaison. um just met you today and hopefully in the future we'll have uh good interpersonal conversations inside and outside of this this meeting format. Um you know I hear good things about you. So I hope you're up for the challenge of living up to all that stuff. I hope you haven't been here in [laughter]

I hope not either. But um you seem to be a nice fellow. Uh you ever see a princess bride? Anyway, uh we'd like to also thank uh Sean Fallon for her service as the liaison. Um I don't know that she's here any longer, but um we really appreciate that. Um as a side note, currently um Dusty was reelected as our chairman and um he's not able to be here, so I am acting chairman. And interestingly, I just thought of this. Um, Carolyn is our official vice chairman right now. So, I'm no longer vice chairman. You're the vice chairman. So, if anything happens to me as chairman, you need to take my place before the end of the meeting. Are you prepared for that? [laughter]

Show us that. Anyway, um, so this will be my last meeting [clears throat] as vice chairman. And, uh, we want to thank you all for coming. Uh, do we have a motion to adjurnn? Make a motion to adjurnn. Second. Okay. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. All oppose. You guys have it. We are ajourned.