03-29-2021 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday, March 8, 2021 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 15 of 23 Mr. Saddiqui suggested they go on with the application, vote on it, and then obviously everything is contingent upon the Met Council approving the amendment change. Then they do not waste time, they continue to work, and continue on. Walsh agreed that makes total sense. Johnson wants to do that but thought Barnhart had an issue with that. Barnhart said no, they are fine, he just wanted to be up front with the Council as he noticed a discrepancy that he had not identified earlier and wants to be sure they were aware of it. Attorney Mattick again said they can do all four of those items in a single motion with the caveat that it is subject to the Met Council’s review of this as proposed. Johnson asked if there are five items. Barnhart said there are four. The actions include Comprehensive Plan Amendment, zone change, preliminary plat and Master Development. Johnson moved, Crosby seconded, to approve Resolution LA21-000014 –Comprehensive Plan Amendment, Zone Change, Preliminary Plat, and Development Plan subject to the Met Council’s review as proposed. VOTE: Ayes 5, Nays 0. Seals asked Staff if they made any progress, as she believes they talked about changing those ranges so they are smaller for density so it’s not such a wide swath. Walsh said so they could adjust it to whatever they wanted to basically. Johnson asked them to repeat that. Walsh said instead of making it a 10-20, they make it 11-20, and instead of 5-10, make it 5-11. Seals said yes, to shrink that ratio. Barnhart apologized and said if that was direction given to him, he does not have a solution for the Council in terms of an actual action. The Council is talking about introducing new land uses, which they certainly can do, and create their own range for those. That is probably a pretty robust change just because they now have to have zoning that ties to that – which again is not impossible, cities do it all the time – but it is a pretty active, intense type of development. He noted this is relatively small as they are talking about 37 units, and the Council is talking about a change that impacts the whole City. They certainly can do that and schedule a work session to talk about what the goals would be for that. Seals thinks that would be good, she noted it came up that they wanted to shrink that down. Walsh said they were debating what it takes, and that is why they needed that extra unit so they could get to 10 units versus 9.7. He clarified if they were at 9.7 all the City got was 5 units, but if there was 10.1 the City got 10 units. That was the whole basis of that conversation.