Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. With a quorum present, I'm going to call the planned commission to order. City of Wausau, it's Tuesday, September 15th, 2026. It is 5.02 p.m. Wausau City Hall Council Chambers. We have public comment listed on on the agenda, but we do have a public hearing, so if you're here for the public hearing, you can come up at that point. Anyone here to speak on the public comment section here? All right, seeing none, we'll go to consideration of the minutes. Item two is approve the meeting minutes from August 18th, 2026. It was a regular meeting. Entertain them. Motion from Brueggemann, second from Balkan. Those in favor of accepting the minutes, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those are approved. Item three is the public hearing. So this is discussion on rezoning 7100, 7104, 7105, 7108, 7109. 71-14, 71-15, 71-20, and 71-23, Honey Locust Court from a single family residential two zoning district to a duplex residential eight zoning district under Thomas Umloff. So the public hearing is now open if you'd care to speak to this item. Gonna announce this three times. Public hearing is open for the rezoning. Last call for anyone to speak on the public hearing section. We'll close the public hearing and we'll move to the next item, which will be the discussion and possible action on that same item. This is item four, discussion and possible action on approving a rezoning. for 7104 through 7123, the Honey Locust Court from single-family residential two-zoning district to a duplex residential zoning district for Thomas Umloff. And would anyone entertain a motion on that? Motion from Brueggemann. Second. From Trueblood. Before we get in any comments, I'll turn it over to Ms. Edmondson.

Thank you, Mayor Dini, members of the Pond Commission. So this item is for zoning map amendment from SR2's designation to a DRA, to DuPont's Residential 8 zoning district. So the desire of the applicant will be to construct twin houses which will have a shared lot line, a zero lot line arrangement where someone would still own the property and the home. So it's an alternative style that's a little higher in density but very desirable. It's a little more affordable and it adds some variety. SO LOOKING AT THE ZONING MAP AMENDMENT CRITERIA FOR APPROVAL, WE DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY CONFLICT WITH THE ZONING CODE AS A WHOLE. WE THINK IT'S IN HARMONY WITH THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. THE SUBURBAN COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL INCLUDES A MIX OF INDUSTRIAL, COMMERCIAL AND BUSINESS PARK USES. GENERALLY NOT SUPPORTING RESIDENTIAL, BUT DEFINITELY IS INCLUSIVE IN THE LAND USE TRANSECT. and consistent with other uses in the area. So there's an overall consistency of land uses, intensities. There would be a slightly higher density, but again, we feel like this is consistent with what's surrounding it and also just with offering a variety of residential types in the city. And we don't have any concerns with the proposal and recommend approval.

Thank you, Carrie. Questions for staff? Mr. Balkan.

We had a project to the east of this a couple of years ago where they were proposing an apartment complex. And I remember that one of the things in that the neighborhood next to it was that there was a lot of groundwater, especially in basements and the people sometimes had two sump pumps. Is there any reference to that with this project or any fear of something like that happening? No.

So I haven't heard anything specifically related to that from the applicant or the builder. I think the, whether it be single homes or twin homes, I think the concerns would be similar where they would just need to accommodate and install whatever's needed for groundwater concerns.

But something like that isn't going to hold up a project. It's just the engineer around it then.

Yes. Yep. That would be my expectation. Bill, do you have any other thoughts?

Yeah, there's wetlands surrounding this development, especially the cul-de-sac here. So they're more delineated. If you've been out to the site, they've raised the grade quite a bit too with some of the, I believe it was some of the digging for the pond for the stormwater on the other end of the subdivision. So I don't think there'll be too much water concern here with the grade being brought up.

Yeah, I think, too, if I can, there's a map up here that Dustin from Freeland surveyed it and engineered it, but there are some wetlands marked on here, the cross-hatched areas, so there are some out there that we think the developers can work around, again, building on the highlands and MAYBE THE BACKYARDS WOULD HAVE SOME WETNESS, BUT THERE IS SOME HIGH AND DRY SPOTS TO PUT HOUSES OUT THERE, AT LEAST ON THIS PARTICULAR PART THAT WE'RE LOOKING AT RIGHT NOW.

ALL RIGHT, THANK YOU, MR. LENTZ. SEEING NO FURTHER QUESTIONS, WITH A MOTION AND A SECOND ON APPROVING THE REZONING. ALL IN FAVOR SIGNIFY BY SAYING AYE.

AYE.

ANY OPPOSED? ALL RIGHT, THAT PASSES. Item 4B is discussion and possible action on approving a conditional use permit for 1509 East Wausau Avenue to allow more than one detached accessory building in the two flat residential zoning district for Patrick Meyer. And we had the hearing on this last meeting. We have a motion from Brueggemann, second from Barniman. Any questions? Staff, you want any comments? Mr. Hebert, would you have a...

Sure. We did provide a staff report in there. Last meeting, we had a neighbor in support of the project and also a colleague that was in support of approving the conditional use. We also had an anonymous written complaint about it. So we noted in the staff report that as soon as Mr. Meyer was aware of the issue or the requirements that he's been trying to comply, so this is just part of that process. If it is approved, we just ask that we follow the building code.

Okay.

All right. Seeing no further questions for staff, all those in favor of approving the conditional use permit, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay. That passes. And that's a done deal here. It doesn't need to go to council, correct? Okay. Thank you. All right, item next up is item 4C, joint resolution from the Infrastructure and Facilities Committee and the Planning Commission approving the Transportation Project Plan for Business 51 Grand Avenue from Lakefield Drive to Kent Street. And Mr. Lehman is not here. Mr. Lenz.

Sure, thank you. So this plat is for the reconstruction of Grand Avenue from the southern city limits up to Kent Street. And the plat shows strips of land that would need to be acquired, also temporary limited easements, TLEs, for the actual construction of the project. Um, so the, the process for approving plats is that INF committee, uh, starts it off reviewing it. They did approve this. Uh, it passes through plan commission on its way to council for final approval. This is at the beginning of the process. It's a DOT project. So, um, I guess they start the process with the, the plats and then design follows that so inf did approve it unanimously in august and now it's here before us before council i guess for our review planning staff did have a couple comments just to note maybe before it goes to council particularly on the last page the The limits of the project are up to Kent Street, but the plat actually is showing up to Ross Avenue, which is a block north. I believe that's just because some of the properties extend all the way on that block. The intersection itself at Kent is part of the project, so they are showing that intersection and some of the properties north of that intersection. Again, they included up to Ross Avenue, I guess, to include all those properties that are affected by the real estate. And again, on the plat, it shows the TLEs are in the dotted areas, the actual fee titles are in the lined areas along the roadways. One thing that did kinda pop out to us is on that Ross Avenue, if they are asking us to approve this section, On the east side of Grand Avenue, it looks like some of their mapping was not updated. There's some old building outlines that are no longer accurate. So I guess I would request that those be changed with the current buildings to get a sense of how far that real estate is encroaching onto those existing buildings, not the ones that were there previously. So that's one change that was noted by planning staff.

So Brad, are you looking for guidance or approval from the commission here?

Yeah, I guess, you know, again, the process would be for INF to provide a recommendation plan to provide their recommendation and council kind of give final approval if there's, you know, conditions or amendments on the approval or just, you know, a communication that they'd like to see this prior to council. I guess those are some options on potentially moving it forward.

Okay, so we would be looking for a motion to include your adjustments. Does anyone have any input?

Motion to approve.

We have a motion to forward in an approving manner to Council on the Transportation Plat for Business 51 from Brueggemann.

Second from Watson.

All right, any further discussion? Thank you, Mr. Lentz. All those in favor of... We'll put passing our approval along to council on the joint resolution for the project plant for business 51 signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? And that passes. Item 4D is discussion and possible action on potential landmarking of Memorial Bridge. And I would entertain a motion and we can tell you where that is because some people may not know.

I would make the motion that we approve.

Okay, motion from Trueblood to approve the potential landmarking of Memorial Bridge. Do we have a second? Okay, second from Bornemann. Okay, so Memorial Bridge is on the west side. It used to be the old Scott Street Bridge. It used to be called Memorial Bridge. It was a cement bridge built in the 20s. It was torn down for the new bridge that you see there now. And a section of it was left at the end, so it's on the northwest end. So as you're heading west across the bridge, as you get over the bridge, it's on the right-hand side. It's, I don't know how long exactly, but you can see the old cement railing structure there for the bridge. And this came to us from the Historic Preservation Committee. And Mr. Lenz, do you have more on that?

Sure, thanks. Yeah, like the mayor had mentioned, the Historic Preservation Commission started the process, the landmarking process. They held a public hearing, and their recommendation basically is to look at whether They deem it historic or not, whether it deserves to be landmarked. And they felt that it did, and they're moving it on to the next step, which is plan commission. And, again, council would have final say. But first here, you know, plan commission does have slightly different criteria than historic preservation commission. They're noted in the memo, but it's basically about, you know, what effect is the landmarking going to have on neighboring properties, the public welfare in general? You know, is it in the public interest to do so? So I guess, you know, based on those criteria, yeah. The criteria are kind of set up for properties more than public infrastructure, but I didn't see anything that necessarily would conflict with that set of criteria. It is in our Historic Preservation Code, Chapter 2.82, that historic preservation is in the public interest. It does protect the general welfare, so ACCORDING TO THAT, YOU KNOW, THERE IS A BASIS FOR POTENTIALLY LANDMARKING IT.

AND I WOULD ADD, IF I COULD, BRAD, IS THAT THERE IS CURRENTLY NO COST INCURRED BY THE CITY, NO FUTURE POTENTIAL COST. THERE MAY BE A POTENTIAL PLAQUE OR MARKER TO COMMEMORATE IT, BUT I DON'T ANTICIPATE THE CITY DOING MUCH WITH IT

Yeah, I guess the landmarking itself, there's no budgetary commitment or mandate that says we have to bring it back to its original state or anything. Landmarking has a couple different reasons for doing it. One is just to bring attention to it, give it some notoriety. But a second one is to protect it from damage. being damaged or potentially removed, demolished. So I think that was not speaking for the commission, but I think that was the main intent is to bring some notoriety to it because it is, you know, maybe not as visible as some other things in the community because of the one way streets and it being on the backside of that. But again, the commission felt that there was some historic value to it. There's some documentation in the packet as well about some of the history. So

Okay, so this would, if approved, would go to council for final approval? Correct. Any questions for staff? Mr. Balkan?

You say there's no fiscal impact for the city on this. Who would pay for the restoration of it then? And, I mean, I've seen this section of the bridge before. It's in pretty rough shape. And, I mean, really the only way you see it is if you're walking into Bull Falls Park. And, I mean, I think... keeping the plaque there would be wonderful for remembrance, but it doesn't really serve any function at all and is in dire need of help. So who's going to wind up paying for that?

No, that's a fair question. Again, we're not asking the city to budget anything specifically with this action, but I think at one point there was a movement to look for grants for foundation help, not the city budget necessarily, but some folks in the community that may have an interest in historic preservation that may want to provide some funding for that. It could be an option.

And as it stands, we currently own it and I guess ostensibly don't maintain it unless there's some vandalism or garbage that needs to be cleaned up. So for the most part, it's sitting there unattended, unmaintained in public view. Mr. Tribolet.

This is one of those... things where it's part of the history of the city that most people don't know about. The bridge itself was dedicated to the veterans of World War I, and it is one of the times that a U.S. president came to dedicate a building in Wausau with President Coolidge doing that at the American Legion conference. The state conference was held here so they could dedicate the bridge. So it does have that historicity. It clicks all those boxes. It has not been maintained, and obviously the actual bridge itself was torn down when they built the new one. So I do think it is worthy of consideration and preservation. Again, I don't think that that rises to the responsibility of the city's dime, but I think that And I think by designating a landmark, it opens it up to greater potential for its preservation. So through grants and other interested parties.

Thank you. Any other comments, questions?

I just have a question. Typically what comes before us when things are landmarked like this are buildings or special homes or something like that. Is there any other... site in Wausau that is landmarked similar to this, like a transportation structure?

Well, I mean, the train depots are landmarked, but those are private parcels, private buildings. It's not infrastructure like this would be. But there is a, I believe one of the islands, Barker Stewart Island, I believe is landmarked. So that's maybe similar in the sense that it's not a building, historic building, but it's more of a site, an area that's landmarked.

If I may, Marathon Park. So entire areas like Marathon Park have been landmarked. So that it's not, I mean, all the buildings are specifically as well, but then the park itself is as well. We're looking at Yaqui Park, the fountain out here. So there are some non-residential things that we have landmarked in the past.

And within Marathon Park, too, some of the structures, the stone walls are considered historic. They're spelled out. That's probably the most comparable. And Athletic Park, same way. The walls are landmarked, the granite walls.

We learned that President Coolidge was here. All right, with a motion and a second for landmarking of that piece of Memorial Bridge that we see as a remnant from the original Memorial Bridge, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, that will go on to council, next council meeting. All right, up next is item five. It's a discussion, item 5A, of the City of Wausau Comprehensive Plan Update Chapter Two, NATURAL RESOURCES. MAP ONE LOCATION AND MAP TWO NATURAL RESOURCES. WE HAVE FROM THE REGIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION, SAM WESSEL HERE. Sam, you have about 35 minutes.

Yes. Yep, I'm keeping my phone out, which is against my own rule, but just so I can know what time it is. All right. Good evening. Sam Wessel, North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. I've been working closely with staff drafting the next comprehensive plan, which is our 10-year plan. Chapter 2 is the one before you today. I'll touch on the maps briefly. The first one is from the first chapter. Second one is with this chapter. Those of you who can kind of just look at it at your own time and shoot me a message if anything looks wrong. And overview of the chapter, not a whole lot has changed. It's from the last one. I mean, the same slopes are in the same places. The river is still here. You know, a lot of the natural resources stuff is pretty static. But we did add some new chapter or sections to the chapter based on requests from staff. And the biggest one of that would be the climate change section. It's not a mandate of any kind. It just gives some trends of how things have changed in recent decades and projections. And these come from the Wisconsin Institute of Climate Change Initiatives. I get that right. Since this is kind of a newer thing, people have requested us to write into these plans. We haven't done them in the past. I reached out to Center for Land Use Education in Stevens Point, and this is what they recommend as the data source. So they're just projections. I mean, they can change over time, but it gives you a sense of, you know, we're expected to be a little warmer and wetter than in the past, but not a super drastic change in the next few years, but it does affect things like what kind of tree species we plant in the boulevards, and maybe we have to design things to handle more stormwater than we did in the past. Other things that are new to this year's comprehensive plan that weren't in the old one. And by the way, the 2017 one is still on our website if you ever want to compare them side by side. Environmental corridors and green infrastructure were sections that were also beefed up just stressing the importance of these continuous areas of green space in the city where The tree canopy is interconnected and supports wildlife, but they also function as transportation corridors for bikes and pedestrians. And then the Stinchfield Creek example of where a stream was buried in the past and it was brought back. And because it's now wider and deeper, it can accommodate more stormwater rather than being constricted to that tube. A lot of cities have been through this where they put in the conduit in the 20s and then Upstream much more pavement and roofs got built over You know the century pushing more water into that pipe and now they no longer can handle it so this is an example of one of many across the country of just let's Re-engineer it to be more natural, but I'll at the same time be able to handle more runoff Before we go page by page is there anything else you want me to touch on Carrie I

So you hit on the biodiversity we incorporated into the urban forestry and vegetation. Parks was very, very instrumental in providing that data just because they do a lot of that work with urban forestry restoration. And then this chapter did also go to the Parks Committee and they had really good feedback that has been integrated. A lot of it was around the goals section, but there was some of that input as well.

And I should mention the goals section, usually we like to start with the previous goals, objectives, and policies so you can see what was adopted 10 years ago and then kind of weigh it against today's needs for the community. So what we did is we crossed off the ones that staff and these committees felt were out of date and added ones that are green and underlined that replace them as a better alternative. That doesn't mean you have to accept them. You can go through them and think about it. You don't have to tell me today what you think about them, but just showing that we're using that format whenever we think there's reason to suggest changes now, and then we can go through them and see which ones we want to keep or change or modify or get rid of. Another logistical thing before I forget, there is a Gantt chart in this packet that We updated it and put it on our website. We have a newer one that shows the chapters. We pushed the chapters back a little bit and we brought the public participation forward a little bit just so that we weren't doing them side by side. We're doing it more public participation at the beginning so that it was ahead of the curve instead of feeling like it was maybe more of an afterthought as we're writing. And then, by the way, we'll bring this in. It's more front and center and then we'll base the chapters on that feedback. So that's not the correct one that you see. The one on our website is. But it's pretty close. It's minor. Other than that, do you want to dive in page by page like we did last time? I don't think it will take a whole lot of time for most of it, but some of the newer stuff, if we don't get it done today, that's fine. We can discuss it at a future meeting as well, and then you'll get a second draft before the end of the project. So any questions before we move on? All right, so starting, and I'm going by the page number that's on the bottom right. I know sometimes the PDF page number is different, but page 23. This is just the introduction where you can see why natural resources are important, what previous planning efforts have been done. If you go to the next page, 24, it's a continuation of those existing plans and then city affiliations is a new section we added just to highlight some of our memberships that we get additional benefits from being part of. And that would be the Green Tier Legacy Community and then the Wisconsin Local Government Climate Coalition. Any questions before we move on to the next section?

Could you enumerate those benefits? Enumerate in terms of... I mean, we do all this work to join these groups. What are the benefits?

I can. I can hit on that. So what we do, there are two kind of different organizations that I would say have different benefits. So the first one, Green Tier Legacy Community, is with DNR. So what that offers, they have quarterly... that's usually an educational piece where there's a presenter and we hear about maybe a new initiative or something that another city has done. And then we as communities give updates. So we give our update, but then we get to hear what various communities across the state are doing. We're also required to do some benchmarking with them. So there's different categories. building energy, transportation, trying to think of the others, land use, where we provide data and can see year over year where we are at on things and know basically what's worthwhile to benchmark and then just see trends and how we're moving over time. So I would say that one is more quantitative and it's more related to project work. Wisconsin Local Government Climate Coalition has a big policy and advocacy arm, so we're kept up to date on state initiatives related to energy and environment, grant opportunities, legislation, kind of policy, as well as under that umbrella they also have work groups. So one of the work groups I was involved in with that was a data center work group, and that was like a group that was kind of looking at nationwide but also statewide how different cities were updating their ordinances related to data centers, so it's a lot of, I'd say, current policy ordinances, and then we also have monthly meetings. I'm on the board for that, so that's another meeting, but we have monthly meetings where we're also, usually there's a presenter, we hear about a project going on in another community, and then just kind of a pulse on what other communities are doing in the area of sustainability and what they're having good kind of results with. So it could be tactical things, it could be actual procurement policies where Procurement is required to be environmentally sustainable. It could be fleet. I'm looking at fleet and how to procure fleet that is environmentally friendly. It's a lot of variety just depending on the communities, but it's a way to be kept in the loop with communities across the state basically.

And the green tier being a DNR program, I know for at least one of their grants that they offer, if you're a legacy member, you get certain points for that and you're not eligible for some grants if you're not a member. So there is a real tangible reason for being part of that.

All right, so moving on to land resources, if we don't have any more questions. A lot of this, these next few paragraphs are going to be pretty similar to what you saw in the 2017 plan, you know, the different soil types, the definition of the prime farm soils, how that works, just the basic topography of the city. Any questions on page 25? You can see at the bottom we get towards brownfields, which we'll talk more in detail in a different chapter. So then moving on to 26. Getting more into just the challenges that come with, there's a lot of high bedrock in some areas, steep slopes, that sort of thing. None of that is new. Largely carried over from the old plan. You'll see the term map X. I didn't get the maps until after I sent this over, so this is gonna be referring to map two. Bottom of 26, we just get into what the elevations are. Top of 27, getting into foundation implications of the different types of terrain that we see and what's possible and what should be avoided. Same goes for infrastructure. It's always gonna be more expensive or challenging when you've got roads or pipes going up steep cliffs and how that all works. Then we move into water resources. Now this is how we discuss how to split it up because we do have a utilities and community facilities chapter and working with staff we decided to split it up differently than in the past plan where this chapter's gonna focus more on what the existing conditions are and what the natural things going on are happening that affects things like groundwater. Once we get into utilities and community facilities that's when we'll talk more about removing PFAS or the other big topics that involve some kind of infrastructure tied to it. Are there any questions so far? All right, we can keep breezing through. So water resources, again, same rivers as last time. Groundwater, just giving a sense of, we pull from the shallower aquifer, the sand and gravel ones, which are easy to access, but they're more prone to contamination because they're closer to the surface. Highlights the importance of the Wisconsin River just because it's such a pronounced geographic feature in the city. What the different threats to the bodies of water are, a lot of that can be either from development or agricultural impacts upstream which are out of our control for the most part, but it's good to be aware of them and what we can do to respond to them if they become a problem. We added more language about SALT. This has been an increasingly important topic statewide, and I found some language that another community requested that I put into their plan, so I brought it to staff and said, what do you think? And we decided we'll throw it in there and see what you guys think, but just getting a sense of SALT costs us all money to apply, so how can we reduce it while having safe roads at the same time? Then we move into stormwater management. A lot of that comes with our challenging terrain. Stuff running downhill is going to cause more erosion. We get into the floodplains. That's a pretty standard definition. Nothing revolutionary there. And then we get into wetlands and how there are zoning protections for wetlands. There's state and federal laws for wetlands, but... Over the course of the city's development, before a lot of those laws went in, we lost a lot of wetlands, so it's always beneficial to see, you know, can you restore wetlands that have been degraded, or can you, if something gets impacted here, can you maybe make up for it by enhancing a wetland elsewhere? Any questions so far? All right, we're flying it. All right, so then on 31 we move into wildlife habitat. This is, again, pretty much the same. We just go to DNR and see what their lists of endangered species are to include those. And touch on sort of the regional stuff. I know like Rib Mountain State Park isn't within the city limits, but a lot of these things are sort of culturally and ecologically significant for our region. The ice trail is another big one because it's not only sort of a preserve, but it is kind of a tourist attraction as well. We get into the Bird City stuff. That's another community designation, so that's a lot like the Tree City USA, which is in the next section. But basically those are two different rubrics where the city meets certain standards for enhancing different wildlife habitat or contributing towards educating the community on these topics. And they... make us look good. I know staff can elaborate on them. I've done a little bit of work with Bird City in the past. I have not done as much with Tree City. I don't know if you have any thoughts if you want to interrupt.

So Bird City keeps us up to date, I would say, on programs and policies that are favorable to wildlife, basically. And like Sam said, there's different tiers depending on what we've done. But we've had the person that prepares the Bird City application present to sustainability and sustainability committee and she did have suggestions for some things we could move forward with and they're open to that. So it's a way to keep us up to date on best practices, current trends, ideas, and then tree city, I would say the parks department is probably more the one that works directly with that in terms of urban tree canopy, reduction of heat impacts, and just the various benefits of having extensive tree plantings within the city. So I think it keeps us interconnected on a nationwide basis. It keeps us aware of new practices, best practices, et cetera.

And with the tree canopy too, I think, one benefit that's often not mentioned of maintaining one is If you're not touching your tree canopy at all, you get a lot more downed branches and a lot more damage and power line issues with that. So that's another, not necessarily ecological benefit, but a utility benefit to maintaining your tree canopy properly. Bottom of 31, we touched on just a few more actions the city has taken in the past, like the Monarch Pledge. And then just a quick list of the invasive species that are the most present in the city.

This may be a question for Carrie. In the greenway for animal paths through the city, it was mentioned that those steeper areas that are more difficult to build could be kind of planned into the, is there an overall plan for how we want those paths that eventually go through the city or?

So in terms of paths, so there's steep slopes that are over a certain percentage that are undevelopable. So those maybe remain like natural vegetation because we can't develop those. In terms of, are you referring to paths like connected greenway or like paths for transportation?

No, well, so I believe it calls them... Oh... like wildlife paths through the city.

Okay, okay. So that I would say is more our areas that remain undeveloped or because we're in an urbanized area, and this is something we tried to really integrate into this plan compared to the one 10 years ago, is how we come back around and kind of build those areas out. And so there's different ways to think about it. One is our impervious maximums and how much of the lot needs to remain pervious. Or for our commercial industrial developments and maybe what we are requiring for landscaping, and wetlands kind of naturally provide that because they're undevelopable. So those kind of provide continuation where they are. We don't have like an overarching like requirement or anything like that to think about this that I know of. I mean, parks may have something that's more extensive. I think they have percentages and requirements for how much within public spaces needs to be planted. But it's something we could definitely look at if we wanted to kind of build this out in a more meaningful or intentional way. But right now I would say it's more site by site and what we're requiring in terms of being impervious, landscaped, And then our natural areas also kind of help provide that, our preservation areas as well, our conservancy.

And I guess the question is, as the city plans its growth and development, because that is one of the goals stated down towards the bottom, that we will work on... natural plantings and so forth that would attract wildlife more than what we currently have, and even considering replacing grass in some areas on public property, do we have an overall plan towards that goal? So I would encourage that we develop an overall plan towards that goal.

I think that's a good suggestion. I mean, that's something we could definitely add to our

Yeah, that would be a good thing to add to the goals, objectives, and policies. The cool thing is a lot of, you know, like the wetlands and the steep slopes, because they are so cost prohibitive or sometimes just not permitted to be built on, they've kind of formed their own green corridors, even if they're on private land to begin with. So we've got a great, the city has great bones to incorporate some of that. But yeah, like the invasive species, if something gets choked out in a park, it'd be nice to be able to remove it so that wildlife can get through there more freely and So what I can do is I can draft a policy that refers to sort of planning more for that habitat diversity.

And I think you have it covered in a couple of your goals, actually, where that would already fit.

Okay.

I just feel like I believe that if we could, because we talk about the plants and we talk about doing away with things, But what are we going to replace those with? So with the goal being the animals as well. So our native species animals path through that. And I know we discussed that with the river walk. But as we get more pressure to develop that, what's the standard to maintain so that the turkeys, the deer, whatever, have a clear path through there as well?

Yeah, and also erosion too. You don't necessarily want to mow your lawn right up to the riverbank because then, yeah, if there's other issues that can happen. Regarding parks, you know, they have a comprehensive outdoor rec plan that they do every five years. I think that's a good place where we could recommend, you know, they could put something in there. Usually those are oriented towards the developed park space like pickleball courts and paths and stuff, but that doesn't mean they, they certainly can add more of that ecological stuff in there if they want. So we can make that a recommendation.

Maybe we could expand under objective A, number nine. Maybe we could make that a little more robust.

Yeah, I'll reword that to imply that it should be put into a plan instead of just this sort of feel-good statement. Cool. Then moving on to green infrastructure, I think that kind of... covered that already with some of the stuff we discussed, but just showing how, you know, you can have something that's designed ecologically correct, but it also serves a purpose from a utility standpoint and a flood control standpoint. Any questions before we wrap up the sort of ecology sort of stuff? All right. Moving on to climate change. Yeah, it's just basically a summary of what that Wisconsin Institute of Climate Change, or Initiative on Climate Change Impacts report says, you know, these are the things to watch for, you know, the changing wildlife, changing tree species, you know, more frequent flooding. What can you do to be resilient? how do you design infrastructure in the future, that sort of thing. And then there's a few tables just showing their projections, these are not from our office or anything, this is from that report. Showing just the change in precipitation by season, what the trend has been over the past half century plus versus the next 30 years. And then the projected increase in extreme weather events such as the heavy rainfall days or the increase in super hot days and maybe a decrease in really cold days. One thing that they mentioned is that if you don't have air conditioning and you have several nights over 70 degrees, where it doesn't go below 70 overnight, that can really affect your health long term if you're exposed to that more and more, especially if you're a little kid or if you're above age 55 or something. Any questions about that climate change data? It gets into water quality, too. I should mention that because I peeked at the survey results. I was going to mention there's, I think, about 150 responses right now. And we're getting more of a diversity in the age groups that were responding. It was the older age categories kind of led the pack initially, but now they're trickling down to the younger ones. But water quality was one that I think is one of the number one things that comes up as like a top environmental issue in the survey so far. And the survey is open through the end of the month. So I'm just going to advertise to keep pushing it out to your friends and family while it's open. All right, so then we get to the natural resources summary and the issues. So a lot of these issues are carryovers from the previous plan. So the brownfields, obviously we've seen a lot of progress, especially the River Life area where former brownfields have been redeveloped and getting ready for more development. We talked about the development constraints where we have land in every direction, but it's not necessarily buildable because of the steep slopes or the wetlands. getting into water quality, you know, obviously there's been concerns over drinking water quality that gets covered more in the utilities community facilities chapter in the future, but also just managing the runoff and the flood waters in the future. Any questions about anything so far? Otherwise that pretty much wraps up the chapter and we get into goals, objectives, and policies. We already talked about objective A, number nine, where we're gonna beef up that language and make it intentional that it's put into a plan instead of just sitting in this plan with no action being taken on it. And that would be the expanding the different species and habitats and especially in like parks and right of way. Then some of the infrastructure stuff, we're just moving a chapter five. I have a note where those ones will be moving. Does anyone have any other suggested changes to the goals, objectives, or policies at this point? All right. I'm going to check my notes here to make sure I got everything I wanted to cover. One thing I wanted to touch on is the new objective C that refers to the circular economy Carrie, I think you forwarded me that one, and I think circular economy just refers to minimizing waste in sort of the supply chain. Is that how you understand it?

Yeah, I think the current thought behind like kind of waste management is that it has a life cycle, and ideally the life cycle ends. Like the item ends, it's been used to its full potential, and it's done. kind of like the old reduce being first and then reuse and recycle. So I think the sustainability committee's working on a plan and they've been talking a lot about these ideas. So I think this just kind of brings it to like the current thinking or the current language and how we're, promoting like moving to zero waste in a perfect world. I mean, of course we know that'd be very challenging. And then also added composting and food waste reduction just because that's something that's really top of mind right now. I talked to Dave at the landfill today actually about something and 34% of the waste DNR did a statewide audit is food waste. So I mean, I think it's something that's becoming more of a topic of interest.

Yeah, I think what I should do is since that's the first place that that term comes up, I think earlier in this chapter I should probably define circular economy and maybe bring in that statistic you just shared. And you said that figure came from DNR audit? Okay.

It's under the waste audit.

Okay, cool.

Cool.

That's all I have. Five minutes? Okay. Unless anyone has anything else.

Any further questions for Mr. Wessel?

And if you think of something in the middle of the night, you can always email me. We can add it.

All right. Thank you, Sam Wessel. Thank you, everyone. From our regional planning office. All right. Speaking of birds. Birds and Art opens this week at the Lee Yockey Art Museum. Go check that out. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Next meeting is October 20th. We are adjourned.

And I'll take your agendas for recycling. Why, thank you.

Great to see you again, as always. Nice to meet you, Bruce.

Good to meet you. I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name.