Last night’s plan commission was pretty grueling, but productive. Partially due to lack of quorum at the last Plan Commission meeting, and partially due to several alders trying to get things done before they left the Council, we had a pretty crazy agenda and I think we did the best we could under the circumstances.
Here’s a few things that we decided or accomplished:
- We got a 20 minute briefing and were able to ask questions and give feedback on the Hill Farms State Office Property
- We recommended approval of the sale of Wingra School, with two modifications to number 13 and 18 and with the recommendation that the money from the sale of the school go into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. We also approved land use changes for the school.
- We recommended adoption the Monroe Street Commercial District Plan, despite the fact that it wasn’t quite complete and that there wasn’t quite agreement about the heights of the buildings and we will likely be discussing this one project by project.
- We referred the East Washington BUILD Plan after several hours of testimony and discussion. We referred the plan so staff could provide us information about how we could do a traffic/transportation and parking plan to examine if the recommended heights were feasible, so we could get a report about the conflicts between this plan and the East Rail Corridor Plan (Why is that still a draft?) and the proposed Tenney Lapham Neighborhood Plan (And when will we finally get the staff to release this plan so we can vote on it?) and, there was one other condition I can’t remember at the moment.
- We recommended approval of changes to the Union Corners land use plan and the SIP (Specific Implementation Plan) for phase 1.
- We approved demolition of a bunch of stuff.
- We recommended approval of the Linden Park school. And we recommended changes to zoning to allow schools to be built in a Conservancy District to do it. (I have to say, that doesn’t make sense.)
- We delayed approval of the rooftop terrace a Johnny O’s to allow the owner to work with the neighbors and neighborhood association.
- Recommended to establish three new wellhead protections areas.
- We recommended adoption of the Neighborhood Conservation District Ordinance (again), with 6 amendments to ordinance that failed the council about a month ago. The changes require a survey of neighbors and a report before a resolution can be presented to the Common Council to establish the district. The request to study the area must come from a resident, commercial tenant or owner in the proposed district. The conservation districts will be reviewed after 20 years to consider changes. Conservation districts can’t be created in newly built areas of the City. Conservation districts can’t be formed simply because there is a landmarked building, there has to be more of a unique feature of the area. And another change or two that I can’t remember at the moment.
- Recommended possible condemnation of a property at 8694 Hughes Place. (I didn’t vote for that.)
- Recommended replacing the Lake Wingra Dam. (It was a pretty quick $1M decision that I couldn’t vote for given the late hour and my personal lack of background information on the subject.)
- Recommended approval of the Office of Neighborhood Support (I’ll see if I can get a link to an electronic version of that) and delayed, yet again, our discussion of the details of the report on the reorganization of the Department of Planning and Development.
Well, who says we can’t get things done if we want to?
All of that took a little less than 7 hours. I hope we can get those appointments made to the Plan Commission so we don’t have further problems with quorum and that we can slow down the pace just a bit so we can make sure we are making good decisions, or better yet, maybe someday we can get our Plan Commission materials sooner than Friday afternoon before the Monday plan commission meeting.
