Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Kirsten LockhartThe places where city-owned assets are basically corollary to the investment being made, right? So we're going to spend money on Willard Sherwood. We're going to divest of green acres in some way, shape, or form, most likely. Let's talk about that, how that looks on the balance.

Matthew RiceAlways good discussions and, I think, good thinking from everybody. I appreciate our voice of history, and it's way more valuable than you realize to have you give that, and it's fine to start with that. Willard Sherwood, if it's to continue, has already been largely planned. And I think in some defense of Van Dyke, pushing Van Dyke, which wouldn't really, the implementation phase wouldn't really happen until 2028. That's the right timing, frankly, from the perspective of Willard Sherwood happening before that. I do recognize that we probably did have a phase eight, nine years ago where things were not being funded. We went through the divestiture of a water system in the city, and there was a period of time where there was kind of great panic about the finances of the city and how we were doing.

mistakes frankly if we u-turn on willard sherwood if we don't make a plan for fire station three even if we do delay some consideration if we don't replace the property or that's my number one we need to fund and figure out as quickly as we can how to deal with that when i started on the Planning Commission we had FEMA flood maps from 2016 the 2023 revision of those flood maps are pretty dramatic that property art is not a place that we should depend on or can depend on at all for deploying a third of our city staff and equipment it just um that's a crisis and we need to sort that out but I think that you know along with the property yard you know fire station number three it this is a station that is completely out

of date with regard to update cycles and because of logistics we do sort of have an opportunity with the neighboring property now in our possession to build a new station and then have a parcel on the north side the old fire station that would be available so i mean there are great opportunities and obviously it's not a we're not in a position where we can fund everything but i think at least keeping in mind uh when we do trim this what it will do to that resident moving in 2035 that you know if we don't have willard sherwood or if our school roofs are leaking you know where if uh our emergency services aren't as well maintained as our neighboring jurisdictions the decision will be you know let's let's go to false church let's

James FeatherAnd I suspect that we'll still be part of the study, and hopefully we'll learn more when we have the Parks and Rec Director here in January. We've, in the past, emphasized, as has been mentioned a couple of times tonight, we're invested in already not making foolish decisions like backing out on you know Willard Sherwood Center or whatever it is and that seems to me it should be a priority the needs were established they've been well studied multiple councils have opportunity to weigh in on them and I think we've weighed in on the number of them ourselves so those kinds of projects should remain as priorities.

out at me in the context of the property yard is the budget, the line item for the West Drive property yard. We don't have it yet. The money needs to be set aside for that. That will be kind of like I consider Willard Sherwood. Acquiring that property from the county is a key investment in the future of the city. We may not know exactly what it will be needed for, but I think it's a piece of property we need. It may end up being part of a future property yard. It may be a future school. It may be a park. It may be a combination. That's the kind of thing that, to me, it's an investment worth considering and not delaying. I'm not sure anybody has considered delaying that, but if I were going to emphasize something that's out there that is an investment that we're going to