Lakewood Planning and Zoning Commission Meeting
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.
Lakewood Town Hall
Call to order: Commission Chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission, Bob Wolfe called the monthly meeting to order at 7:10 p.m.
Present: Chair Wolfe, Ann Cutts, Phil Halverson, Dick Bodine, Chris Ronningen, Angie Dickenson, Zoning Administrator Brennan Mears, Recorder Shannon Ostazeski, Dave Miller and Don Davish from the Center for Rural Planning, Chuck Campbell and Tim Musik.
Minutes of Previous Meetings: November 28th, 2006 Planning and Zoning. Halverson had a language clarification he wanted to be made. Motion for the minutes to be approved by Cutts. Second by Bodine. Minutes approved. Motion to amend minutes with Halverson's request. All approved.
Select Representative to February 7, 2007 Board of Supervisors Meeting: Ann Cutts
Board of Supervisors January 3, 2007 Meeting:
Wolfe gave the meeting update. Noted Dick Bodine will be chairing the next meeting because he will be unavailable. Wolfe thanks everyone for their participation and has enjoyed working with everyone, this will be his last meeting with this commission. Dan McCorrison has resigned. March 13th will be the Township election and the annual town meeting will be held after the polls close at 8:15 p.m.
Wolfe: I will turn the meeting over to the Center for Rural Planning.
Musik: State statute requires that Comprehensive Land Use Plans be updated every ten years. Lakewood Township is well past that deadline. We received a Lake Superior Coastal Program 3 to 1 grant for $17,000 to update it. We will be including the survey we completed in 2002.
The Supervisors will be selecting the representatives for the steering committee. The open house will be on February 13th.
Center for Rural Planning: Don Davish and Dave Miller (Not present: Sue Lawson)
Dave Miller: Center for Rural Planning was started in the Duluth Township. It was created out of a similar process you will be going through. From what we learned in updating our CLUP and Ordinance in Duluth Township and our experience with urban consultants we decided to form our own non-profit organization. We wanted to get together with your group for questions before the whole process so we could get an idea of what you want in your survey. Don will be putting together the all-resident survey for the Township. We are already in the process of updating some of your basic information about soils, demographics etcetera about Lakewood. All that information will be available at the open house on February 13th. After that the steering committee will be selected from the Board of Supervisors. The steering committee is a way to get a wide array of people involved and have a representative group of the Township.
We are hoping to have the draft done by June so that we can get it published and place it on the website by fall. At that point we will have another open house for folks to gather and make suggestions about any revisions that need to be made. After revisions are made a public meeting will be held and then it will be done. It could be done before that, it just depends.
Halverson: Are the steering committee meetings public? Have you found good participation in that?
Miller: It will be public, just not as formal. We will set a schedule to meet twice a month.
Wolfe: You will be facilitating?
Miller: Yes.
Wolfe: At what point could we start to work on the Ordinance?
Miller: You could move right into it. Duluth Township was on a separate grant for that but if we still have adequate time on our grant we could also help you with that.
Musick: We want to avoid a process of what Rice Lake got into. They did not want to work on their ordinance right after they were done with their CLUP. Now they have a new CLUP and an old Ordinance.
Dickenson: What happens in the interim before we have another Ordinance?
Miller: You use the old Ordinance.
Dickenson: Is there a legal review of these documents?
Miller: No. Your attorney might want to be more involved with you Ordinance.
Dickenson: Will you be recommending in the process?
Miller: We are facilitators, we can help you and you may even want to consider some items we used in Duluth Township but it is your work.
Halverson: Is our CLUP typical to others?
Miller: Yes. Of course some of the things are out-dated. You have a good starting block.
The Planning and Zoning Commission then made suggestions to the Center for Rural Planning about what to include in the survey.
Wolfe: Next meeting will be February 27th, 2007.
Motion for the meeting to be adjourned by Bodine. Second by Cutts. Meeting adjourned.
Respectfully Submitted,
Shannon Ostazeski
Township Recorder
ISSUE SUMMARY
LAKEWOOD PLANNING AND ZONING BOARD
January 30, 2007
The Planning and Zoning Board met with CRP to gather input on current issues facing the Township. The input will be used to develop a survey of Township resident that will provide additional input for use by the Planning Steering Committee. This summary will also be given to the Planning and Zoning Board as input.
The following issues have been summarized into broader categories. Some of the issues identified fall into more than one category and are listed twice:
Quality of Life
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Roads
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Density, lot size, set backs
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Urban interface with Duluth
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What is rural?
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Recreational activities (trails, parks, hunting, etc)
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Population growth of community
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Open/green space (County tax forfeit land sales)
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Agricultural land moving to residential
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Visual (junk and screening)
Development
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LIU along expressway
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Planned Residential Developments (PRD)
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Density, lot size, set backs
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Regulations on development
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Ridgeline development
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Marginal building sites (wet lands)
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Cluster development
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Commercial vs individual development (cell towers, wind farms, home business, etc)
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Enforcement of zoning regulations especially when it comes to marginal sites
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Most building good building sites developed (maximum allowable development?)
Community or Sense of Place
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Residential (MUNS-4)
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Emergency services
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What does community look like (define)?
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Urban interface with Duluth
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Community center or places
Environmental
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Storm water runoff
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Water quality
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Impervious surfaces
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Vegetation removal
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Wet lands
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Lighting and noise
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Visual (junk and screening)
External Influences
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Commercial corridors (Jean Duluth Road)
Other
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Need to define terms
At the close of the meeting there was a discussion on how the survey would be sent out-registered voter, household, combination. The problem with voter registration is that the list only includes those who voted in the last election. There may be more then one opinion in a household so no way will get all people. Question about the reply rate-we pointed out that no matter what you will get input from those that are intereste4d. How the survey is stratified and mailed out will be decided by the Town Board. We will provide an analysis of the results for P&Z, Town Board and Steering Committee.