Earlier in the week, Griff Wigley, Ross Currier, and I had Councillor Erica Zweifel as our guest on the LocallyGrown audio show. (Earlier in the month Councillor Betsey Buckheit and Councillor Rhonda Pownell were also on the show; Locally Grown is doing a series, trying to have each councillor as a guest for a review of the past year, and looking forward in 2010.)
After the show I talked a bit with Tim Freeland of KYMN Radio about their ability to stream and store City meetings in the Council Chambers, and asked about doing the same for the Planning Commission (and possibly the EDA). Tim said that technologically there is no obstacle, that everything is set to go, but that there may be some City Hall bureaucracy to work around regarding security and access to Mission Control behind the door in the Council chambers. Erica heard some of this discussion, and I hope will bring it forward to staff/Council for a solution.
I’m thrilled with KYMN’s setup and have taken advantage of it for the past few weeks. I don’t have cable, so it’s a great way for me to view or review the meetings, and I think my ability to use KYMN’s web-based tool helps me to be a better citizen and better Planning Commissioner.
On Wednesday I met with Brian O’Connell and Dan Olson to figure out the best way to manage the input and output of the information to be gathered at the 1/21 work session on the Land Development Code. Our new process (summized here) involves, among other things, more closely articulating the connection between the ordinances to the relevant land use principles, objectives, and strategies in the Comprehensive Plan.
At the Planning Commission meeting and work session on Thursday, the PCZBA welcomed its newest member, Richard Schulte, who moved to Northfield from Ohio a couple of years ago. We finalized the Planning Commission liaison assignments, and also held a public hearing as required when recommending an ordinance change to the City Council. In this particular case, a change in PCZBA meeting dates to the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month requires a revision of a City ordinance. The recommended ordinance change would also allow the Planning Commission to determine its meeting dates in the Commission bylaws rather than by ordinance, so this sort of thing can be streamlined in the future. The board also received brief liaison reports from members attending Rice County Board of Commissioners (Thomas) and the EDA (Rholl).
Moving on to the work session: We continued our review of the Land Development Code, which seemed to proceed in fits and starts. We’re making our way through the review itself while simultaneously shaping the new process. At this work session, we went up again to a birds-eye view of the Comp Plan to identify the larger themes as they relate specifically to residential development, to confirm that we were all on the same page before drilling down to a more detailed level at next week’s work session.
Carleton’s Dr. Aaron Swoboda brought a small class in to observe the meeting; Lord only knows what they thought of it all, but at least no one fell asleep.
We’ll resume our progress on the draft Land Development Code at next week’s 1/28 work session.
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Thanks Tracy. Glad the service is being used and appreciated. We’ll continue to try to figure out a way to bring more meetings to the live stream.