MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION,
WHICH TOOK PLACE ON
1. Roll
Call
PRESENT: Brown,
Eyre, Hanna, Kozakiewicz, Mead, Senesac
and Svenson
ABSENT: Gaynor and Jocks
OTHERS PRESENT: Daryl Poprave, City Planner; Debbie
Marquardt, Technical Secretary and 3 others.
2. Introduction of New
Members
Introduced
the two new members. Diane Brown and her
term expires 2009, and Gayle Hanna and her term expires 2008
Gayle
Hanna was raised in Midland. She is
interested in the future of this community.
Diane Brown has been in Midland for 23 years and raised her family. She is an IT professional and hopes to
contribute to future development. Dan Kozakiewicz and Roger Mead were both reappointed.
3. Selection of Chairperson
and Vice-Chairperson
Terms run
from July to June and then elect new officers.
The nominating committee consisted of Bill Eyre and Carol Svenson and Bill nominated Dan Kozakiewicz
as the Chairman and Carol Svenson as Vice Chair. Mead move to accept the recommendation for
chair and vice chair. Brown seconded the
motion. All in favor unanimous. Ray passes the gavel to Dan.
4. Approval of Minutes
Regular Meeting of
It was moved by Senesac and supported by Eyre
to approve the minutes of June 13th. The
minutes were unanimously approved.
5. Public
Hearing
None
6. Public
Comments (not related to agenda items)
None
7. Old Business
None
8. New Business
Midland
Master Plan – Brad Strader from LSL lead the discussion. They are one third of the way through the
master plan. The Planning Commission
approved a draft of the demographic chapter.
Each
chapter will have a study section with the Planning Commission and then in January
they will unveil the draft before the official public hearing process.
Wetlands are based on different
sources. They use resources that are
available. They use the flood plain and
a little bit of field verification and overview of what the existing conditions
are.
The background in natural resource deals
with the watersheds and existing land use map and inventoried the woodlands and
wetlands. There are 22,500 acres that
are classified as natural features in the city.
Over 5,000 acres are woodlands.
Areas that are state wetlands are 2,000.
Lakes and detention ponds and rivers 1,000 acres and just under 4,000
acres are in the floodplain. Much of
these are overlapped.
Soils are usually a big factor in cities
but in MUGA it determines perks. If you
don’t have utilities, you may have to go out and remove soil.
The master plan is looking into the
future. Based on the parks and
recreation plan and keep the plan readable and keep focus on future.
Before next meeting get comments in to Daryl
so they can get the draft done.
Strader showed the future land use map,
the first cut. They looked at where
should residential should go and where commercial should go. They would like to add downtown density to
support businesses, take better advantage of the river. The assignment for the Planning Commission is
to use the map and drive around and become familiar with what is on the
streets.
Roger asked if they should address
downtown separately and should they address the circle area separately?
Commercial is logical to maintain a
vigorous downtown. Additional commercial
will keep dollars in Midland. There is
primarily industrial by the west interchange.
Daryl stated that light yellow residential
and dark yellow multi family should be more contrast.
Ray stated that one area that they haven’t
talked about and will have some real changes in the next 25 years is out on Bay
City Road.
It looks like there may be an over
abundance of senior housing.
Gayle was asking about farm land and if
they looked at conserving that.
Sometimes the best land to develop is
prime farm land.
The flood plain is in blue and the intent
is not to encourage development in the flood plan areas. Put a disclaimer and state what the flood
plain is and it is very difficult to develop in that area. A lot of that space in the flood plain is
public land
Build out analysis. Take out for wetlands and flood plains and
then for roads and how many units and then multiply it by the number of people
in the household. The chart below shows
the number of housing units. What the
population could be. These are work
papers but could be included in the plan with some narratives. The projected population is always wrong.
The next meeting they will
go over natural features and traffic counts.
When school is back in session, they are looking for volunteers for
traffic counts. This is good experience
for the Planning Commission. They will go through movements from right and left
to make sure adding right turn lane or left turn arrows are needed. It will take place two hours in the morning
and two hours in the evening. Two people
are needed at each intersection to count the two different directions. Daryl will take the list of volunteers. Dow Howell Gilmore will take the names. The Jefferson Avenue corridor, just north of
Joseph down to the circle and Wheeler Street from Waldo Avenue all the way back
to Saginaw and Eastman Avenue south of Wackerly
Street to St. Andrews. There are a total
of 11 intersections and three major corridors.
This will be a mid week count.
The next meeting will take place the first Thursday of October and then
every month after that.
9. Communications
Included in the packet was Article 30 from the Zoning
Ordinance. A couple of issues of Planning
and Zoning News were passed out along with Michigan Planner.
10. Report of the Chairman
None
11. Report
of the Planning Director
Michigan Planning Conference to be held on October 11-14 in Detroit. The city would like to send two to three
members so please check your calendar and let Daryl know.
The
August 22nd Planning Commission meeting is cancelled.
The September 12th Planning Commission meeting will have three
rezoning petitions: ZP #531, ZP #532 and
ZP #533.
The Zoning Board of Appeals will meet on August 15th and has
three cases.
12. Adjourn
Adjournment at 8:38 p.m. was unanimously approved.
Respectfully submitted,
Daryl Poprave
City Planner
MINUTES ARE NOT FINAL UNTIL APPROVED BY THE PLANNING COMMISSION