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Monday, March 28, 2011

Master Plan Mar 24

This meeting reviewed the Industrial Core Plan.

There was discussion of

  • New Zoning Codes
  • Old permitted uses
  • ReZoning to Industrial, see below
  • Relaxing restrictions on Enterprise Parkway
    Would that make it the 5th shopping center?
  • New Auto Service District, All auto service in city is non-conforming use
  • Next mtg April 21 on Goal Setting
  • After Goal Setting, the Planning Dept will make updates and run them by committee
There were 3 major rezoning issues in the Industrial Core Plan:
  1. Bainbridge Rd West
    No objections from residents, Small section of houses between SOM and Harper recommended as transitional office service
  2. SOM/Aurora West
    Objections from residents, Near Verizon, was removed from plan, NOT referred to committee
  3. Solon and Richmond
    Objections from residents, suggested that large track be redeveloped as new industrial
    Was removed from plan, BUT referred to committee, committee discussed and reached consensus to recommend that this land remain residential, wetlands are not conducive to industrial redevelopment.
Both the CRD and Industrial Core have an entire new set of zoning classifications, these will need to be sent to the voters for approval.  The permitted uses also need a revamp.

One of the 11 missing chapters - Residential Neighborhood Future Plan will be written and reviewed by the group.

Minutes are here.

Monday, March 14, 2011

State of the City

Every March the Mayor gives a talk to the Chamber of Commerce about the State of the City.  This year it will be on March 22, deadline to register is March 18, click here for details.  An article in the Solon Patch can be found here.

Look at archived programs to see prior talks.  Click here for the latest talk.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Infrastructure Budget

ROUGH DRAFT

Despite our huge $9M infrastructure budget, this years projects outpace it by $1.3M.  Rather than making the difficult decision of what projects to do and which to delay, it was decided that this was a "bubble" year and that we'd be more balanced in future years, that the costs will come in below the estimates, and that we would issue bonds if necessary to cover the costs.

This city spends a tremendous amount on paving.

Deer Culling

ROUGH DRAFT

The expensive deer culling was stopped for a year and now they want to restart it...

At the recent Safety Meeting they approved $30K to use a thermal count of the deer, despite an alternative method costing only $5K.

This year, as before they plan on counting Glenwillow deer.  No one seems to know why we'd pay extra to count deer that aren't in our city.  Will Glenwillow be paying for part of the count?  Will they kick into the $150K that will undoubtedly reduce their deer population?  UNLIKELY?

Finance allocated $150K (only $100K was requested) for an unknown plan before any study was done.  Doesn't seem like prudent fiscally conservative finance.

For more info on Deer Management Issues see SolonDeer.org.

Budget Hearings

Rough Draft

Budget Hearings

Budget posted here.

Master Plan Mar 10

This meeting continued on with the Central Retail District (CRD) Plan.  Observers using the newer web version have difficulty following the the discussion where the old page numbering and chapters are being refereed to.

The new Commercial Zoning regulations were discussed, these have not been passed by the voters yet.

The CRD Infrastructure issues were discussed including

  • Bainbridge Rd Straightening
  • Connector Rd (suggestion to be put behind Sears/Marcs
  • Other Connector Rd (behind Bob Evans)
  • Bainbridge Rd widening to 3 lanes west of SOM
  • Requirement that new development have banked cross access, so multiple properties can be accessed with one curb cut
  • Solon Rd widening to 6 lanes
  • Underground Utilities are less unslightly but more expensive, a rather high figure of $1M/quarter mile was used.
The issues of 422 access were discussed.  Solon didn't want Big Box retail, so now its in Bainbridge and we get the traffic.  Could another exit be added to 422 half way between SOM and 306?

Discussions on removing the N&S bridge or converting it to a pedestrian walkway were made, a practical suggestion was to "re-purpose" rather than "remove".

The issue was raised that when the economy bounces back we should be ready for it by concentrating on the CRD, Rob concurred saying that he had planned on covering just the CRD and Ind Core "this time", next time is in six years.

Again the new street signs were discussed.

A Community Attitudes Survey was also discussed.

Next meeting is in 2 weeks, topic will be the Industrial Core, the controversial change of residential to new industrial is likely to be discussed.

Issues observed but not discussed at the meeting include:

  • It is unclear how observers can have input to this process
  • As plan is discussed there are dated items that are not being noted
  • N&S was discussed as a future pedestrian walkway, no mention was made of the much more practical W&LE RR
  • If only the CRD and Ind Core are topics for this time how will we catch up with the 11 missing chapters and 4 documents parts?
  • Minutes are taking about a month to be published
Minutes are here.

Master Plan Feb 24

ROUGH DRAFT, TO BE UPDATED

This meeting consisted of reviewing the first half of the Central Retail District Plan (CRD).

The three shopping centers in the center of town were discussed.

Issues observed but not discussed at the meeting include:

The redevelopment plan for the Sears/Marcs plan shows the entire existing lot, but does not take into consideration three other major Master Plan goals, the straightening of Bainbridge Rd, the Connector Rd parallel to SOM, and the SOM Boulevard plan.

Minutes are here.

Master Plan Feb 10

Feb 10, 2010 was the first meeting of the Solon Master Plan Citizens Input Committee.  There are 10 members, 1 member from each ward, 1 rep from the Planning Commission (Rodger Newberry) and 2 more appointments by the Mayor.  The meeting is headed by Rob Frankland Planning Director with his secretary and Planner 2 in attendance.  Planning Commission Chair Mazur has also been a regular attendee.

The previous Master Plan was in 1975, in 2001 a Citizens Committee was formed and in 2005 there work was done, however the zoning code was even older so Rob worked on that.  Also in 2005 the charter was updated to require a Master Plan review every 6 years.  In 2010, after some discussion and some changes the Master Plan was adopted (2010-218) so it could be reviewed in 2011.

While the Master Plan discussed many issues, 11 of its 27 chapters are missing:

  • First four chapters of the Introduction including
    • Abstract of the city
    • Background and Purpose
    • Summary of process
    • Description of Study Areas
  • Seven chapters of the Future Land Use including
    • Peripheral retail and industrial core plans
    • Residential Plan (mentioned as important at this meeting)
    • Parks, Recreation
    • Community Character
    • Population Growth Mgt (related to Parkstone and Abate controversies)
    • Misc Planning Policies
  • Misc Document Parts including Table of Contents, Index, List of Maps and Charts, and Appendix

Two more chapters, the traffic and sewer engineering studies have been printed for members but are not yet on the web.

Several updates have been made to the Master Plan available on the web, the version now available does not show these missing chapters and all chapter numbers have been removed.

The first meeting was mainly to introduce the members to the Master Planning process.

A new issue, federally mandated street signs was discussed.

When the planning goals (formerly Ch 5) were discussed, a comment was made that these appeared to be Vision Statements and not actionable tasks.

Minutes are here.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

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