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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006-02-28 Planning Board Minutes COMPREHENSIVE PLAN WORKSHOP TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2006 MINUTES Board Members Present: Robert Guerette, Chairman Nat Rosenblatt Alice Brown Laura Mitchell City Staff Present: David Gould Jim Ring Peter Witham Mr. Guerette called the meeting to order at 6:37pm. He had for review first Element #5 Fiscal Policy. Because it is out of the Planning Board’s realm and does not directly impact the Land Use Ordinance he did not have any comments. Ms. Brown noted that there were some grammatical errors that needed work. Mr. Gould said the he was responsible for deletion noted. Ms. Mitchell commented on the page 7 about business activities and that some of the items do not compare well. She noted that it was great that it came from the annual budget, but thought it should have more trend data in order to make projections for the Comprehensive Plan. On page 10 there is a similar presentation about current debt limit and a percentage that would be issued, but not of what. Mr. Ring commented and interpreted what he thought it meant. There was concurrence. Ms. Mitchell asked about the policies listed and Mr. Gould thought it was interesting that some were duplicates of others. Mr. Rosenblatt asked if these were carried over from the previous year. He asked if the front office was asked about some of these. Mr. Gould said that it was copied to the Planning Office and he forwarded it to Board for review and comment. The Board talked about which ones could be deleted and which ones kept. Mr. Guerette said that he would be reluctant to strike some of them not being familiar with them. Ms. Mitchell asked about previous discussions on impact fees for sidewalks if that concept would apply to other aspects to reduce City costs. Mr. Ring did not know if that would be a concept to implemented Citywide. Mr. Gould noted some that were broken out as possible user fee policies. Mr. Guerette said he understood some of the language lacking in discussions of ways to tie costs to users. Mr. Rosenbaltt noted one about private developments and improvement costs, but he did not know what aspect it applied to. Ms. Mitchell thought it might apply to new developments. Mr. Ring added comments about funding concepts for improvements and how they changed over time from public to developer funding. Drainage fees have been discussed for projects. One concept that will come back from time to time is that of user-based trash fees. Ms. Mitchell clarified that if it were a sidewalk in front of one’s house that one was obligated to clear, it was tied to one’s property. Mr. Ring said that he understood the issue and in Bangor in front of commercial properties the owner must clear the snow from them. Mr. Guerette asked if the Board would have to clear it with the Manager’s Office to add any recommendations to this text. Mr. Gould said that he did not think so. If the Board wanted to bring a section from the Transportation Element where the subject has been added, then it could. The idea that exists now is that a project at a certain level is kicked into the D.O.T. Traffic Permit process. If it is below that level it may be causing traffic problems, but not required to provide improvements for them. The idea is to try to level the playing field. Ms. Mitchell asked about #15 where it states that Bangor should continue to make development pay the costs of improvements, but the City is not doing that presently, so the statement should be changed to start. Mr. Ring said that he reads it that we are doing that for some of the improvements, but there is merit to having an impact fee to build up a fund for constructing improvements. Mr. Guerette said there should be caution not to place the City at a disadvantage by for attracting development by requiring an impact fee. He added that it would be a nice update of this section. He asked if there was anything on Element 6 and any other updates on Elements that the Board had received. There was discussion of the calendar. Ms. Mitchell asked about the Element updates that had not been discussed. Mr. Guerette said that on tonight’s agenda was a discussion of setting up a date for the public presentation and after that the Board should schedule one more workshop to do final tweaking before advertising for the Public Hearing. He thought that would bring us to March 28 when any last minute revisions should be included. There was continued discussion and the prospect of every other Tuesday meetings ending. He thought that some extra advertising for the public presentation should be done, because few people have shown up to these workshops which are public meetings. There was more discussion. Mr. Ring thought that the 2 Bangor Daily News might be able to do an article and that the City could do a press release. Mr. Rosenblatt asked if the Planning Office could provide materials to the public if requested. Mr. Gould said that they would be put online as Adobe .pdf files. Mr. Guerette said that he would like to talk about the meeting format. He said that it would be important to point out the new vs. old in the Land Use Concepts map that came out of the update. Mr. Ring said that he presumed there would be comments from the presentation workshop, but what about written comments. There should be a deadline in order to incorporate them. There was more deadline, timing discussion, and whether the comments need to be answered. All of the comments do not have to be answered, but the points need to be addressed. Mr. Guerette thought all members should give a short statement on what they thought of the process and what transpired. He said that if everyone was in agreement then we should look forward to a good meeting. The Board set March 14 for the public meeting with March 24 for the deadline of comments. On March 28 there will be the final workshop and soon after that will be advertising for the Public Hearing in May. The meeting adjourned at 7:28 p.m. 3