Planning Commission Minutes 2015 10 08

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes October 8, 2015 Page 20 of 23 Rice says regarding the sign issue that we have been discussing, is that addressed? Russ says it is not addressed. We agree with you. We think there is clear inconsistency between what the market wants and what our standards are providing. Staff feels like you do on consistency. We have an ordinance and we should have a larger dialogue if we want to change those. We fully support that. We think the Small Area Plans enable that conversation. When the commercial deficiencies are heard regularly, one of the follow-ups will have that robust conversation in the Small Area Plans, and that will set up an Action Item. That Action Item will bring in and actually change the code similarly to what was done in Downtown. We will do that both for industrial and commercial. We don't know if it is next year based on work load, but we think the Small Area Plan gives us the precedent to then have the consultant or Staff address both at the same time for efficiency. Pritchard asks if any Commissioners present tonight have any comments, positive or negative, to discuss and present to Staff before the meeting with City Council. Moline says that Staff did a great job of giving us the information we needed to make decisions on dockets and on projects. When you look back on the list of things, we approved a lot of things that deserved approval and we did a lot of work. What worked well for us was working through the agendas for all the meetings. Russ says of the 30 cases, the PC has only recommended one denial for DELO Plaza. Council did end up approving it with Staff conditions. They heard your comments and added conditions, but fundamentally, it was the same site plan to which you recommended denial. The PC recommended approval to the first Gateway PUD amendment, the house on the hill, and the height issues. Council denied the first request, but then approved the second. From a percentage of 30 reviews, having PC deny one and CC deny one, is outstanding. Rice says that if I look at all of different things the PC does, what I say works well is that Staff does an excellent job working with the applicants to get things hammered into a good proposal. They do not allow a lot of junk for the PC to deal with. It makes our job quite simple. It seems like the kinds of things that we would have trouble with, Staff has already fielded, negotiated and gone through what I call the "interactive process" with the applicant to get things done. With only one exception that I can think of this year, I thought that Staff had really done well on the "interactive process". On that particular one, the word I used was "half-baked". It seemed to me the proposal wasn't ready to be in front of us. I am not what the source of that was. I think that's what works is that Staff is doing a high quality job of bringing these things in front of us. Moline seconds it Brauneis says the comfort level of sitting up here and knowing that applicants are coming in, have had discussions with Staff, and that Staff has been able to work with them on various issues before it is presented to the PC. Staff's pre -work helps the PC on the entire process. Moline says that the applicants come to the meetings and say, "it was great" and "we had a great experience working with Staff". Russ says we are blessed with the Staff we have in the Planning Department. I don't know if you know how much heavy lifting the Public Works Department also does with us. I have to give kudos to the Engineering Department in Public Works. We appreciate your comments. Pritchard says regarding the list of goals for next year, what kind of feedback can we expect back from City Council? I think they do an adequate job letting Staff know when PC is running