Planning Commission Minutes 2015 10 08

Home Browse Search

Planning Commission Meeting Minutes October 8, 2015 Page 21 of 23 off the rail. This team as a collective whole works very well to make sure information is passed along, such as our feelings from PC meetings. Do you feel we need more feedback from Council or are you comfortable with the way we are currently going? I open this up for discussion. Moline says that the public does not attend our meetings as much as Council meetings. I wonder if Council is hearing from their constituents on particular issues. It might be good to get a sense from Council as to what they're hearing from their constituents about particular projects or trends in the City. How do we get that communication? My sense is that they might hear more than we do. Russ says absolutely and we will add that to the communication. Brauneis says Council shares when feeling pressure on particular issues. The thing that doesn't work well, and there were very few examples, is when very clearly PC was side-stepped and certain issues were brought to Council without prior larger discussion. Pritchard says historically, there have been times when the PC and Council were not in sync. There was a concerted effort to improve the communications. I think they appreciate how much we "go through the weeds" to address these projects as they come through. We are getting more of an appreciation. Russ says the example I will bring up, especially what Commissioner O'Connell felt, was concern about DELO Plaza and parking. The City Attorney and Staff believed we structured the agreement in a way that the quasi-judicial element was still independent. From what I observed, Commissioner O'Connell clearly did not feel that way. I think this is a specific example of what you are bringing up. Pritchard says it might be nice to let Council know that and if they didn't catch that, it is a good example. It has been a while since we have not been on the same page. We want to be as productive as possible. Talking about the funding, knowing that funding is limited and not all programs will be prioritized, what do we really want to step forward and see if we could address and push from a budgetary issue? To me, it would be the review of the industrial guidelines and the commercial guidelines. I'd like to see the Small Area Plans done and I wish we were further along on that. I wanted to see that last year. Again, when money is going out the door, I'd like to see some progress. Brauneis says the Small Area Plans are absolute priorities. Rice agrees that a lot of labor has gone into the Small Area Plans and a lot of good thinking. We need to finish that job. Brauneis says we have often discussed parking requirements in the commercial and industrial districts as well as in Downtown. Russ says that parking is not on the list but we have talked about excess or shortages. The Downtown parking is on the list, but the CDDSG and IDDSG are not. They are perfect subsets of the Small Area Plans and are exactly what the Small Area Plans deal with. The Industrial area is sitting orphan. The Small Area Plans address the CDDSG from a sign perspective. Taking advantage of the consultant or the team, it is easy to do signs in both districts. Parking is somewhat customized and you want to study that district. I think we should call it out in here as a concern you want to address.