The timetable for a new master plan and an early assessment of the city’s new zoning code were discussed Tuesday at the annual joint meeting of the Mt. Pleasant City Commission and the Planning Commission.
Also discussed at the meeting, which lasted only about a half hour, was an idea from City Commissioner Will Joseph to look into requiring large multi-family-housing buildings to offer recycling bins for their tenants.
Here is a look at the issues:
Master Plan
The city is about to begin the process to have a new master plan for the city and for the Parks and Recreation Department.
The current city master plan was written in 2006. It was updated a few years later, with the changes being adopted in November 2014, City Planner Jacob Kain said.
He said the plan is out of date and needs to be redone.
“In the 2006 plan, significant portions of it date back to planning activities that happened in the late ’90s,” he said. “It’s time. There’s a lot of things that have been added to the plan through the updates and it’s cumbersome to administer. We’ve gone through a lot of changes the last few years.”
The first step will be to select a consultant for the project. That is expected to be done by September.
The rest of the timetable is:
* January – March 2019: Principal public engagement to get the public’s input and update residents.
* September 2019: Draft plan released to public
* January 2020: Updated draft plan released to public
* July 2020: Plan adopted.
Issues that will be looked at include: Current conditions, trends and projection; the vision for 2050; land use; transportation; housing; economic development; public safety; and parks and recreation.
For the downtown, according to information from the city, the plan will “analyze the city’s central business district including infrastructure and programs; identify opportunities and challenges; and establish goals, objectives, and policies to produce a vibrant center for the community.”
For Mission Street Area Plan, the goal is to “analyze the Mission Street corridor, from Bluegrass Road north to the city limit, and Pickard Avenue from Mission Street east to the city limit; identify opportunities and challenges; and establish goals, objectives, and policies to transform Mission Street into a safe, vibrant, attractive, unique, multi-modal, mixed-use district. The proposed plan will build upon earlier efforts to improve the corridor and be consistent with the city’s zoning ordinance as well as the future land use and transportation vision for the community as a whole. Extensive coordination with the Michigan Department of Transportation is expected to produce a plan that is viable.”
City Commissioner Tony Kulick noted the airport needs to be included in the Master Plan, and wasn’t sure if it should have its own section. City Manager Nancy Ridley said the airport would be included in the transportation section of the plan and possibly other parts.
Planning Commission Vice Chair Susan Horgan said she wanted to make sure young people had input as the plan is developed, as she wants Mt. Pleasant to be the type of city where they would stay after graduation.
Zoning
Planning commissioners had few concerns with the city’s new zoning ordinance, which took effect earlier this year.
They said they would prefer to wait until the ordinance has been in place a year, so they would have more time to see its impact.
“I don’t see it as any hard and fast rule, but rather the diversity of the cases, in which the ordinance gets applied, might help us have more of a sense where anything might need to be tweaked down the road. It all depends on what applications come into City Hall,” Planning Commissioner Matthew Liesch said.
So far, two projects have been before the Planning Commission since the new zoning rules were put in place: a special use permit for a new hibachi restaurant in Stadium Mall was approved by the commission in April and a special use permit for renovations at the McDonald’s restaurant at 1804 S. Mission St. was before the board at the March meeting.
In early March, the McDonald’s project initially did not meet the city’s requirements for the number of windows facing Mission Street. Kain said that issue was resolved within days of the meeting, with the architect and consultant revising the design for the building.
They also were denied a variance for signs by the Zoning Board of Appeals, as their original proposal included more signs than city code allows.
Planning Commissioner Kathy Rise said the McDonald’s case was hard for her, as she didn’t want to have to reject the project.
“I do want Mt. Pleasant to be known as a city that will work with business, so that was my only issue with that very first one,” she said.
City Commissioner Lori Gillis said her only concerns with the new zoning is how it will affect the former M2 neighborhood, referring to the area directly north of Central Michigan University’s campus that includes University, Franklin and Lansing streets.
“I’m just concerned about the M2 area that we rezoned” she said. “… As I said when we approved the zoning ordinance, I don’t want to see an increase in density, but I don’t want all the homes to become dilapidated because they can’t redo it.”
Recycling at apartment buildings
Expanding recycling in the city was one of the issues Will Joseph wanted to tackle when he began serving on the City Commission this year. He was on the Planning Commission last year.
He brought it up near the end of Tuesday’s meeting, asking if there was a place in the solid-waste section of the zoning ordinance for the city to require that multi-tenant buildings, such as apartment complexes, offer recycling bins for their tenants.
“I would like the Planning Commission to consider an idea that came to me when we were going through the approval process for the zoning ordinance, but it didn’t make it (into the ordinance). I’d like to see for larger apartment complexes, if they are making changes or requesting a special use permit, that they have to incorporate recycling (containers). I’m not super familiar with how the process would work, but that would be my suggestion.”
City commissioners unanimously supported having city staff look into the idea.
Currently, the city has requirements for multi-family housing for their solid-waste bins, but doesn’t require recycling bins.
“This would not only require that if they have bins to enclose them, but that they have bins,” Kain said. “It may be that the zoning ordinance isn’t the best place to address that. We’d have to look at it. We have solid waste codes elsewhere in our ordinances.”
City Commissioner Kathy Ling also thanked the planning commissioners for their work on the proposed medical marijuana ordinance. The Planning Commission had a public hearing on the issue last week.
“I watched the tape of the Planning Commission meeting, at least the part that pertained to medical marijuana, and I appreciate the thoughtful discussion that went on,” she said.