Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

I expect Kate, don't we?

She didn't say either way. Or I didn't see it.

I thought I did. Maybe not. All right. Well, it's 7 o'clock. We'll go ahead and begin. Welcome, everybody, to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on June 4th, here today at 7 p.m. So we'll go ahead and start with roll call. Kate, or sorry, Paige, could you help with that?

David Larson.

Present.

John Mayer.

Present.

Pete Fuller.

Present.

Stephanie Garner. Present. David Huser. Kate Payne. Kathy Olser. Present.

All right. So we have a quorum, so we'll go ahead and begin. Item C in our agenda is approval for our last meeting's agenda as printed. I'm going to ask for a motion for that.

I so move.

Okay. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. That passes. Thank you. Item D on our agenda is approval for, it says March 5th. Am I reading this right? No.

You're reading last month.

I'm reading the paper in front of me and not the screen.

Oh, sorry.

My apologies, sorry. Okay, so the item we just voted on was June 4th, that's tonight, and now we're voting on April 2nd. 2026 which was our last meeting I would ask for a motion for that as printed I'll second all right that's also been moved and seconded all in favor please say aye aye all right that motion passes not sure I can do this next All right, item E. So this is a public hearing section, so I usually just explain briefly what happens. So I'll open a public hearing, I would ask anyone who wants to speak to the commission, come to the podium, state your name, your address, please address the entire commission, and then when we're done with comments, we'll close the public hearing, and then we may have some discussion here as a commission ourselves, and we'll continue through our business. With that, I will go ahead and open the public hearing for the special provisional use at 1805 Horton Road, Waverly, Iowa. So if anyone here tonight would like to come up and ask any questions or say anything, please do.

Hi, my name is Carly Schmelzer. I'm the Chief Operations Officer for Northeast Iowa Community Action Corporation. So the application has been submitted by our organization. If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer. It's pretty straightforward as far as I'm concerned, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I am here if there are any questions. Thank you.

Alright, any other comments from anyone in attendance? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing and we'll move through. Paige, if you could read the agenda memo through us.

Yeah, so like Carly said, they did apply for the special provisional use. Previously, the Head Start classroom was operating at this location. With the change of use from that preschool type to this non-profit organization, it flagged to have a new special provisional use put in place.

Okay. I do have a question. Can I get a feeling for the amount of traffic the daycare versus this new use? Is it gonna be more, less, the same? I have no idea. I mean, how many customers do you get at the existing facility and opposed to the number of students were at the old facility?

Honestly, if you're talking traffic per day, it's probably pretty equivalent. With the Head Start classroom, you're going to see more traffic first thing in the morning and then pick up in the afternoon versus our current operations there. We do require appointments, so you're not going to see a flood of people all at one time, or a lot of heavy traffic in the area. The community is pretty used to scheduling appointments in advance, so you will see one at a time throughout the day, so probably similar comparison to the total number of people traveling through in a day, just spread out more throughout the day, if that answers your question. Yes, thank you.

Ms. Page, I don't recall seeing anything. Was there any feedback from the public notice?

No public comments were received.

Okay.

I will move that the Planning and Zoning Commission recommend approval of the special revisional use at 1805 Wharton Road to the Board of Adjustments.

Second. All right. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. Hearing none opposed, that motion passes.

All right.

So item F on our agenda under regular business is apply to survey creating parcel AG and parcel AF located at 309 Fifth Avenue Southwest and 602 Third Street Southwest here in Waverly. Paige, could you walk us through that memo?

Yeah, so this is a bit of a unique situation where Kate had pulled up Beacon on each of your guys' computers. So if you look at that aerial image, there is a driveway coming from Fifth Avenue Southwest going south to this garage building. The driveway is on Platte's property. The garage is actually half on both properties currently. Between communications with both of them, The proposal is for the garage and driveway to be fully on Meisinger's property. Platties will still have access through the alley to utilize a separate garage building in the backyard. And we do have a representative here to try and answer questions a bit. Any come up?

Was that garage shared between the two properties or?

90 years.

Yes. Your half and my half or vice versa? Paul, come on up and introduce yourself.

I'm Paul Plattie here on behalf of my mother, the owner of the property. There is a wall in the middle of the garage. It's separate, but we all get along. It's a cloud on both of the titles. We just want to clear it up. So, interesting. What's the building behind the garage, the small one? Is that another garage? That is another garage. A little shack, a little shed. And that moves over also? It might have been a garage 90 years ago for a Model T, I don't know.

Yes, that would move over to Weisinger's as well. It's not in great condition, and I've talked with Zach. Once that comes down, it won't be replaced.

I hate to say it, but that's an understatement.

Yes. That's kind of why I asked what it was. It's not really describable.

So did I read that there will be a building removed and then they will both be compliant?

They're not. With this proposal, they aren't going to remove that back building we were just talking about at this time. Zach had talked about plans to do it, but not right away. Okay. Kind of one step at a time.

So there's a purchase agreement involved in this, did I say that?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes. Is that any of our business? I mean, is there anything in that that we should know?

I don't think so.

No, I did get a copy of it before I brought it to you guys, just to make sure.

We're just selling everything to the Leisingers, the driveway and the garage.

I would move the Planning and Zoning Commission recommend approval of this plan of survey, creating the two parcels, putting the garage on the Weisinger property.

All right, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. All right. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. Hearing none opposed, that motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, John. All right. Item two, under regular business, is election of officers. So it is that time of year again, here in June. Usually we do it in May, I guess, but we didn't meet in May.

We didn't want to do a meeting just for election of officers.

I support that.

Last choice. Sir, are you willing to continue to serve, Dave?

If you are nominating me, yes, I would be willing.

I would make that nomination. David Larson continued to be the chairperson.

I'm the second guy tonight, so I'm the second again.

I would accept. So we still have a vote, correct?

If we can do a vote on that one first.

That one first, okay. All right, so accepting that, I ask for a motion. Because it does say move that the Plano, Atlantic, and Zoning elect me.

Yeah.

Okay.

We can do a separate. It's up to you guys. We can do them both as one vote or separate votes.

We can keep them separate, I think, just for this. I guess. So we'll plan on just saying, so obviously I accepted that and it's been seconded, so I'm just gonna say that we've moved to do this as myself as chairperson. So with that, I would ask for a vote. All in favor of me continuing as chairperson, say aye. Aye. Okay, that motion carries as well, so thank you. All right, moving to vice chairperson.

John, you are our current vice chairperson, am I correct? Is that a position?

That's fine with me.

I move John, nominate John as vice chair.

I don't get to do that very often. All right, it's been moved and seconded. John has accepted that nomination or that recommendation. All in favor that he is our vice chairperson, please say aye. Aye. All right, that motion passes as well. Congrats again. All right, item G, staff updates. Anything?

I do not have any.

So cool. Item H, commission updates.

I do have one thing I want to mention. I'm probably one of the three people that reads legal notices in the Waverly paper now and again. There was a public hearing notice on the paper Tuesday that the county is getting ready to adopt a new comprehensive plan. And I was interested and wanted to see what it was like and I tried to find it at the public hearing notice that it was on the county website and I could not find it and so I actually visited its courthouse and I was not I was looking at the place where the old comprehensive plan was, and she said, well, just go to the home page under the news. And sure enough, click on it, and there it is. So anyway, I did spend some time. And while I was there, I asked Lindsay, I said, so has there been any discussion with the city, the idea of a two-mile zoning agreement and that kind of thing? And she said, well, no, there hasn't been. But she said, you know... It's something that the current commission and board is not really terribly interested in. So I went into the document and it's arranged in much the same order as our comprehensive plan is. It has categories, agricultural and natural resources, economic development, public infrastructure and utilities, land use and so on. And I mention those because goal number three under Ag and Natural Resources is strength and coordination with municipalities. One of the tasks listed under that goal for the medium time frame is collaborate with cities and get the 2082 mile zoning in place. Economic development is to designate priority growth along highway corridors and they identify their primary corridor is 218-27 South between Waverly and Janesville, which makes sense. There's, under public infrastructure and utilities, again, it talks about coordination with utilities that are owned, you know, because they don't own utilities, with the owners of utilities. City of Waverly would be one, City of Trapola and so on. Intergovernmental collaboration is a high objective. Maintain consistent communication with zoning officials. That's one of their tasks. Land use is strengthened coordination between governmental agencies. So it does have things in it that will affect the city of Waverly and actually all incorporated communities within the county. I just think it's something that we need to keep maybe reminding them that this is, if they do adopt this comprehensive plan that has these elements in it, that they don't forget it. I hate reading it on the computer. So I printed the executive summary, which is about 26, 27 pages, but it's... It's got all the specific tasks that they're talking about. The public hearing is on the 16th, I believe, of June. I don't know if it's worth attending, but I didn't see anything that was terribly contradictory to our comprehensive plan. I would have to say it doesn't. And there's some very, there's some good statistics in there about county growth and so on. They do have a chapter on, they asked, Intercog is the one that helped prepare this thing. And they asked them to look at potential tax revenue and how that was gonna work. And it's not a good picture, particularly with what's happened in the legislature this year. You know, and the 2% growth limitation, and that does not keep up with inflation. And that's gonna be, gonna become a bigger and bigger problem. I'm not sure it's a planning and zoning issue, but it's going to be a bigger government issue for local governments, it really is, so. That's it.

What time is that meeting on the 16th, do you know?

I thought it was, it's in, I thought it was at 9 or 9.15 in the morning. 9 o'clock. 9 o'clock, yeah.

Thank you.

I mean, if anything, if I had the time, I would go and reiterate those points and say, we're ready.

Yeah, I know we've talked about that at different points through my tenure as well and kind of received that same feedback that there's...

Admittedly, a big emphasis is preserving agricultural land and knowing the people on their Planning and Zoning Commission, you know, I understand that. The interesting thing is reading the Bremer County Task Force, the people that are on that task force that were part of it included Paula Geiss from Bartels, let's see, Mark Happel, County Engineer, Chelsea Peterson, Waverly Chamber of Commerce, Shelly Wolfe as the auditor, Pam Eggly, you know, the city. Danny Gordon with the city, you know, she's with the chamber and a business, a new business owner. So there were people on that. I haven't had a chance to talk to any of those individuals, but, and what, how big a role they had in drafting the action steps. They are there.

I haven't had a chance to look at that yet, but is there a land use map in there as well? Yes, yes, there is. Is there any major changes to what the previous one was?

Not that I can tell. Trying to read it on an 8.5 by 11 sheet is difficult. But the existing and the proposed, the big thing is the commercial corridor between Waverly and Janesville. They've identified a few others. One that I would have liked to have seen would be basically the development on Highway 3 out to the interchange at least. I mean, to me that would have made a sensible one to be as well.

So where is this in their process? Has it been?

This is the public hearing on the draft plan. The Planning and Zoning Commission evidently has already had their hearing, and they have recommended that to the Board of Adjustment, or to the Board, County Board of Supervisors, that it be adopted. The supervisors have to have a hearing, just like our City Council had a hearing on ours. and then there would be action to adopt it after that.

I'm just curious, I should just read it a little bit myself, but was there anything, I'm just curious, you know, headlines lately, you know, data centers and zoning ordinances, and some of these... Ironically, I did ask...

Lindsay, I said, so have you had any requests for a data processing center? And she said, not yet.

I know that I've asked her that same question just kind of internally as we're getting ready to do some updates. And she said they've just touched on it a little bit. So conversations are definitely happening.

But it's fair to say there's no language.

Probably nothing. It wouldn't get that specific, I don't think, in the new plan.

Not in this, right?

Yeah. All right.

nor do we have any language in our city currently.

Not currently. We have... It would be an industrial zone. Our industrial zones are pretty specific on what can be allowed type of thing, though. So, yeah. I'd have to look at it closer and see.

It's certainly something that we should, with the free rate. And I guess I was going to ask, since I was reading the wrong notes anyway, is that a... But code rewrite still budgeted?

Yep, council approved the agreement on the second meeting of May. And so we'll start working with Bolton and Mink July 1, and then I'll just kind of bring it. If you guys have suggestions that are to get ahead of, absolutely send them to my way, or as discussion. discussions start coming up that we can bring kind of back and forth.

Yeah, I think that's one to at least get some language drafted or thought about. For sure. Appreciate it, John. Anything else? I don't have anything commission-wise. Okay. All right. That brings us to item I on our agenda, which is adjournment.

I move that we adjourn. All right.

We are adjourned. Thank you, everyone.