The City Council-P&Z disconnect

I’m not sure the Planning & Zoning Commission gets it. There’s something about handling an assignment from the City Council that simply evades the individual commissioners. Take the Comprehensive Plan, for example. The time had come for a five-year (mid-term) tweak of the plan. The City didn’t want to spend taxpayer funds on the consultant that usually deals with all things involving the Comprehensive Plan so it asked the Planning & Zoning Commission to handle it. The commission took one look at the plan and said, in effect, "Whoa, there! This plan contains a number of items that are just beyond our limited means to handle." So what they did was they drafted a letter (the wording of which will be finalized at P&Z’s May 10 meeting) informing the council of those areas of the Comprehensive Plan a consultant should be hired to address.

I may be way off base here, but I don’t think that letter fulfills the assignment handed the commissioners by the City Council. Neither do I think the Council sought to have the commissioners deal with any part of the plan that was outside their expertise and capabilities. But there was plenty of information in that plan that did fall within those confines, much of that information needs to be changed and the commissioners haven’t done that.

The same thing happened last night, at least to my way of thinking: The Planning & Zoning Commission shirked its responsibility. The City Council has asked the City’s various boards and commissions to vet candidates seeking to serve on the respective boards/commissions. I know that recent council meetings have featured the chair of both the Library and the Parks board appearing before the council with the names of the candidates they had vetted and were recommending as replacements for departing board members. Last night was commissioner Mike Wilson’s last meeting and the names of two possible replacements – Brad Growt and John Atkins — were placed before the commissioners to be considered as Wilson’s successor. However, instead of discussing the merits (or possibly the liabilities) of the two candidates and then voting on which one to recommend, the commissioners, for all practical purposes, just threw up their lands and said "Both are fine with us. Let the City Council decide" and by a 4-2 vote decided not to approve either candidate. Which was exactly what the council was trying to avoid, i.e., the perception that politics interferes with the selection of boards and commission members.

Like I said, I’m just not sure they get it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another oddity from last night’s meeting had to do with the Consent Agenda, which, theoretically, is supposed to contain items that are so routine, so non-controversial, they don’t even need to be discussed. They can simply be passed en-masse with a single motion, a single second and a single vote. Last night’s Planning & Zoning Agenda contained five items and Wilson pulled two of them, which had to do with a proposed residential development on that peninsula nestled in the Plum Creek Golf Course that extends into the pond. (It’s that beige area in the map above). Wilson lives in Plum Creek and after noting that both Fairway, the street that’s closest to the proposed development on the south and Sanders, which borders it on the west, flooded during the Halloween storms and said he was concerned that homes located in this development would be underwater in the case of another 800-year flood event.

However, Tony Spano of Plum Creek Development, tried to assure the commissioners there was no problem here.

"Rest assured Plum Creek is extremely interested in whether or not homes flood," Spano said. "In the past two years we’ve had two major events. One was a 500-year flood and one was an 800-year flood. In both of those situations we didn’t have a single homeowner flood.

"In this particular area, the lowest point of the street itself 762.4, which is three and a half feet above the flood level," Spano said. "And the home itself is two feet above that. So in the worst case condition, the homes in this area will be six feet above flood plain."

Not everyone on the commission was persuaded, however. When it came time to approve the two items involving these homes, they only passed 4-2 (Commissioner Irene Melendez did not attend last night’s meeting). Wilson voted against, but it was impossible to determine where the second nay vote came from. I suspected it was from Commissioner Lori Huey.

It’s not unheard of that items are pulled from a consent agenda. In fact, it happens regularly. But it is somewhat unusual that when those items come to a vote, a third of the voting members are against it.

All three action items on last night’s agenda passed unanimously.

The commissioners approved a conditional use permit for the construction of a veterinarian clinic to be located in the vacant lot pictured above which is one of the last two undeveloped lots in the Goforth Road business park across from Fuentes Elementary School. The clinic will look like all the other buildings in the park, one of which is pictured to the right. For what it’s worth, the clinic will be right across Elmhurst from the local Fox Pizza outlet.

Approved a conditional use permit for the rehabilitation of the building pictured above which is located at 114 S. Front St., next to Pizza Classic. The owners of the 800-square foot structure are hoping to convert it from home, which has been in their family since 1945, into a store where religious artifacts are sold. The commissioners also gave the owners permission to paint the structure purple, although Chairman Mike Rubsam clearly wasn’t overly enthusiastic about that particular color scheme. I have not been inside the building, but a quick look at the place reveals its exterior requires major repair. The owners also said they will make the facility ADA compliant.

Recommended the City Council consider changing the zoning on property on Windy Hill Road where the above-pictured self-storage units are located. The property is currently zoned for agriculture and the owner wants warehouse zoning attached to it. This is another one of those instances in which land was annexed into the city long after the storage units were built. The act of annexation itself does not require the owner of the annexed land make zoning compliant with its use unless changes are planned for it post annexation. Now, however, the owner, Jacob Jisha, said he wants to add 121 more units totaling 14,000 square feet to the property which, he said, is currently "about 30 percent build out."